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The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.

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
Writing
People
Behalf
Fancy
Silly
Service
Worst
Anyone
Truth

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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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The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,--whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,--which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.
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Whatever be thy fate today, Remember, this will pass away!
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It is better - it shall be better with me because I have known you.
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May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.
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Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses.
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Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
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There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.
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I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.
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When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.
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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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Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.
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It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.
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Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.
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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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I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.
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When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.
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Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.
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The bow always strung ... will not do.
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As leopard feels at home with leopard.
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