Quote

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.

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
Learned
Inferiority
Lasts
Learns
Last
Lesson
Nature
Fancy
Better
Clever
Must
Lessons
Would
Failure
Comfortable
Contented

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Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
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Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.
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There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work.... The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot.
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In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.
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in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
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How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends!
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How oft review each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend.
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To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
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The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.
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The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
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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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The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
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Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
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... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.
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Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.
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I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.
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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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Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow.
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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.
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Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
George Eliot