Quote

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

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
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Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Moment
Victory
Resolution
Moments
Close
Reasoning
Become
Strength
Gates
Nullify
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Struggle
Iron
Sophistry
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Bring
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Snatch
Long
Clear
Conviction
Irrevocable
Love
Hours
Tests
Fatal
Upon
Defeat
Struggles

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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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Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.
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That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.
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... there is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain point, women should but in a light way, you know.
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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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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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They say fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those who merit.
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The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
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For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
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My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.
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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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Better a false belief than no belief at all.
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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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As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.
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You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.
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