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Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.

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
Knowledge
Incompatible
Better
Confident
Thing
Liberal
Liked
Became
Soon
Simply
Conjecture
Everybody
Allowance

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Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
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When we are dead : it is the living only who cannot be forgiven the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind .
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There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us.
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Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains blends yearning and repulsion and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.
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You may try — but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
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There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.
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Husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.
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Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.
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Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.
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Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.
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When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.
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But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.
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Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.
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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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But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.
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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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Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.
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Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.
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It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
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Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
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