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

More quotes by George Eliot

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What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other that has always been my firm faith about friendship.
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There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born.
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To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.
George Eliot
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Shepperton Church was a very different looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former days but in everything else what changes!
George Eliot
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bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin.
George Eliot
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... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.
George Eliot
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That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
George Eliot
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There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.
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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.
George Eliot
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For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.
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This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.
George Eliot
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I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day. No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.
George Eliot
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In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.
George Eliot
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Knightly love is blent with reverence As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue.
George Eliot
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Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.
George Eliot
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Particular lies may speak a general truth.
George Eliot
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When we are suddenly released from an acute absorbing bodily pain, our heart and senses leap out in new freedom we think even the noise of streets harmonious, and are ready to hug the tradesman who is wrapping up our change.
George Eliot
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Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.
George Eliot
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A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.
George Eliot
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Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
George Eliot