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... as usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.

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
May
Complete
Able
Mere
Book
Worth
Much
Doubt
Heap
Make
Books
Lest
Literature
Addition
Suffering
Usual
Fear
Contribution

More quotes by George Eliot

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You must learn to deal with the odd and even in life, as well as in figures.
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Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.
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The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
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To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.
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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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What if my words Were meant for deeds.
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There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.
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The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.
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As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them.
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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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When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.
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The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.
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It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.
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Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
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Starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags , we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.
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As leopard feels at home with leopard.
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Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
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What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
George Eliot
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Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.
George Eliot
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The rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families.
George Eliot