Quote

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
Power
Greatest
Right
Opinion
Work
Public
Belief
Honourable
Wrong
Shameful
Heaven
Steam
Society
Ruling
Tell
Engines

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We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.
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She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
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A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
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It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.
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What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
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A good horse makes short miles.
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Things are achieved when they are well begun. The perfect archer calls the deer his own While yet the shaft is whistling.
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We cannot reform our forefathers.
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Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.
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Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
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Trouble's made us kin.
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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.
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The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.
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Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.
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Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation.
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But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?
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