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It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

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
Men
Happiness
Along
World
Feelings
Thoughts
Ever
Rest
Wells
Goes
Come
Sort
Pleasures
Well
Feeling
Caring
Great
Pleasure
Wide
Much
Poor
Highest

More quotes by George Eliot

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Perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering, than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth.
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I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
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It is very difficult to be learned it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.
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I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
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Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say
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What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
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I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.
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Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.
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Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.
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What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
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Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.
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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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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
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Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
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Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning.
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The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities it is an expansion of the animal existence.
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It is a common sentence that knowledge is power but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.
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That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
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How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?
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The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
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