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I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

George Eliot

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George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Wrong
Shameful
Heaven
Steam
Society
Ruling
Tell
Engines
Power
Greatest
Right
Opinion
Work
Public
Belief
Honourable

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There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.
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Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
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The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.
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Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
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There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.
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That is the bitterest of all,--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
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One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.
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The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.
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I think I am quite wicked with roses. I like to gather them, and smell them till they have no scent left.
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Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
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People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes.
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We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings.
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And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.
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Trouble's made us kin.
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What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.' 'He means to draw it out again, I suppose.
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You must learn to deal with the odd and even in life, as well as in figures.
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I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.
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It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
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Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift for you.
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But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.
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