Quote

Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.

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
Living
Touch
Tell
Dead
Hands
Side
Never
Hell
Dropped
Would
Sides
Preference
Men
Hand
Breathing
Rather
Explain
Woman
Exists

More quotes by George Eliot

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A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.
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What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
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I've had my say out, and I shall be the' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living, if you're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.
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Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow.
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We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
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This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.
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The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.
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O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.
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Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?
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But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
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If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application.
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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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The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.
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Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
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There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.
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We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass . . .
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If I could only fancy myself clever, it would be better, but to be a failure of Nature and to know it is not a comfortable lot. It is the last lesson one learns, to be contented with one's inferiority -- but it must be learned.
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We cannot reform our forefathers.
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In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.
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