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... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.

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
Seeing
Within
Business
Environs
Human
Shuts
Humans
Advancement
Without
London
Believe
Glad
Life
Sight

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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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Surely, surely the only one true knowledge of our fellow man is that which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.
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To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue.
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O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.
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Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
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It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge.
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Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
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But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?
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The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
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It's no trifle at her time at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.
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There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?
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Human experience is usually paradoxical.
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There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that-to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
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I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me
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Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.
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The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant.
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An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
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There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
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I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over.
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Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.
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