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And Dorothea..she Had No Dreams Of Being Praised Above Other Women. Feeling That There Was Always Something Better Which She Might Have Done If She Had Only Been Better And Known Better, Her Full Nature Spent Itself In Deeds Which Left No Great Name On The Earth, But The Effect Of Her Being On Those Around Her Was Incalculable. For The Growing Good Of The World Is Partly Dependent On Unhistoric Acts And On All Those Dorotheas Who Life Faithfully Their Hidden Lives And Rest In Unvisited Tombs. Middlemarch

-George Eliot

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And Dorothea..she Had No

George Eliot

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And Dorothea..she Had No Dreams Of Being Praised Above Other Women. Feeling That There Was Always Something Better Which She Might Have Done If She Had Only Been Better And Known Better, Her Full Nature Spent Itself In Deeds Which Left No Great Name On The Earth, But The Effect Of Her Being On Those Around Her Was Incalculable. For The Growing Good Of The World Is Partly Dependent On Unhistoric Acts And On All Those Dorotheas Who Life Faithfully Their Hidden Lives And Rest In Unvisited Tombs. Middlemarch

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It Is Better Sometimes Not To Follow Great Reformers Of Abuses Beyond The Threshold Of Their Homes.

My Books Don't Seem To Belong To Me After I Have Once Written Them; And I Find Myself Delivering Opinions About Them As If I Had Nothing To Do With Them.

Childhood Has No Forebodings; But Then, It Is Soothed By No Memories Of Outlived Sorrow.

A Man Never Lies With More Delicious Languor Under The Influence Of A Passion Than When He Has Persuaded Himself That He Shall Subdue It To-morrow.

Minds Fettered By This Doctrine No Longer Inquire Concerning A Proposition Whether It Is Attested By Sufficient Evidence, But Whether It Accords With Scripture; They Do Not Search For Facts As Such, But For Facts That Will Bear Out Their Doctrine. It Is Easy To See That This Mental Habit Blunts Not Only The Perception Of Truth, But The Sense Of Truthfulness, And That The Man Whose Faith Drives Him Into Fallacies Treads Close Upon The Precipice Of Falsehood.

Expenditure--like Ugliness And Errors--becomes A Totally New Thing When We Attach Our Own Personality To It, And Measure It By That Wide Difference Which Is Manifest (in Our Own Sensations) Between Ourselves And Others.

It Always Seemed To Me A Sort Of Clever Stupidity Only To Have One Sort Of Talent - Like A Carrier Pigeon.

Character Is Not Cut In Marble - It Is Not Something Solid And Unalterable. It Is Something Living And Changing, And May Become Diseased As Our Bodies Do.

Perhaps Nothing Ud Be A Lesson To Us If It Didn't Come Too Late. It's Well We Should Feel As Life's A Reckoning We Can't Make Twice Over; There's No Real Making Amends In This World, Any More Nor You Can Mend A Wrong Subtraction By Doing Your Addition Right.

Our Life Is Determined For Us--and It Makes The Mind Very Free When We Give Up Wishing, And Only Think Of Bearing What Is Laid Upon Us, And Doing What Is Given Us To Do.

I Don't Want The World To Give Me Anything For My Books Except Money Enough To Save Me From The Temptation To Write Only For Money.

It Seems To Me As A Woman's Face Doesna Want Flowers; It's Almost Like A Flower Itself.... It's Like When A Man's Singing A Good Tune, You Don't Want T' Hear Bells Tinkling And Interfering Wi' The Sound.

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.

Enveloped In A Common Mist, We Seem To Walk In Clearness Ourselves, And Behold Only The Mist That Enshrouds Others.

If You Deliver An Opinion At All, It Is Mere Stupidity Not To Do It With An Air Of Conviction And Well-founded Knowledge. You Make It Your Own In Uttering It, And Naturally Get Fond Of It.

In The Days When The Spinning Wheels Hummed Busily In The Farmhouses--and Even Great Ladies, Clothed In Silk And Thread Lace, Had Their Toy Spinning Wheels Of Polished Oak--there Might Be Seen, In Districts Far Away Among The Lanes, Or Deep In The Bosom Of The Hills, Certain Palled Undersized Men Who, By The Side Of The Brawny Country-folk, Looked Like The Remnants Of A Disinherited Race.

Children Demand That Their Heroes Should Be Freckle Less, And Easily Believe Them So: Perhaps A First Discovery To The Contrary Is Less Revolutionary Shock To A Passionate Child Than The Threatened Downfall Of Habitual Beliefs Which Makes The World Seem To Totter For Us In Maturer Life.

It Is Necessary To Me, Not Simply To Be But To Utter, And I Require Utterance Of My Friends.

History Repeats Itself.

The Floods Of Nonsense Printed In The Form Of Critical Opinions Seem To Me A Chief Curse Of The Times, A Chief Obstacle To True Culture.

But If Maggie Had Been That Young Lady, You Would Probably Have Known Nothing About Her: Her Life Would Have Had So Few Vicissitudes That It Could Hardly Have Been Written; For The Happiest Women, Like The Happiest Nations, Have No History.

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.

The Idea Of Duty--that Recognition Of Something To Be Lived For Beyond The Mere Satisfaction Of Self--is To The Moral Life What The Addition Of A Great Central Ganglion Is To Animal Life.

It Is Worth Repeating That Powerful Imagination Is Not False Outward Vision, But Intense Inward Representation, And A Creative Energy Constantly Fed By Susceptibility To The Veriest Minutiæ Of Experience, Which It Reproduces And Constructs In Fresh And Fresh Wholes; Not The Habitual Confusion Of Provable Fact With The Fictions Of Fancy And Transient Inclination, But A Breadth Of Ideal Association Which Informs Every Material Object, Every Incidental Fact With Far-reaching Memories And Storied Residues Of Passion, Bringing Into New Light The Less Obvious Relations To Human Existence.

If You Could Make A Pudding Wi' Thinking O' The Batter, It 'ud Be Easy Getting Dinner.

We Mortals, Men And Women, Devour Many A Disappointment Between Breakfast And Dinnertime.

There's No Disappointment In Memory, And One's Exaggerations Are Always On The Good Side.

Exaggeration Is

To Most Mortals There Is A Stupidity Which Is Unendurable And A Stupidity Which Is Altogether Acceptable - Else, Indeed, What Would Become Of Social Bonds?

I Have The Conviction That Excessive Literary Production Is A Social Offense. ... Everyone Who Contributes To The 'too Much' Of Literature Is Doing Grave Social Injury.

Animals Are Such Agreeable Friends.

Our Virtues Are Dearer To Us The More We Have Had To Suffer For Them. It Is The Same With Our Children. All Profound Affection Entertains A Sacrifice. Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are, Just As They Are Often Better.

The Greatest Benefit We Owe To The Artist, Whether Painter, Poet, Or Novelist, Is The Extension Of Our Sympathies.

College Mostly Makes People Like Bladders-just Good For Nothing But T'hold The Stuff As Is Poured Into 'em.

There Is No Killing The Suspicion That Deceit Has Once Begotten.

Life's A Vast Sea That Does Its Mighty Errand Without Fail, Painting In Unchanged Strength Though Waves Are Changing.

The Higher Life Begins For Us ... When We Renounce Our Own Will To Bow Before A Divine Law.

Better A False Belief Than No Belief At All.

Unhappily The Habit Of Being Offensive 'without Meaning It' Leads Usually To A Way Of Making Amends Which The Injured Person Cannot But Regard As A Being Amiable Without Meaning It.

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

We Are Overhasty To Speak As If God Did Not Manifest Himself By Our Silent Feeling, And Make His Love Felt Through Ours.

Our Deeds Determine Us, As Much As We Determine Our Deeds.

There Is No Private Life Which Has Not Been Determined By A Wider Public Life.

There Are Few Of Us That Are Not Rather Ashamed Of Our Sins And Follies As We Look Out On The Blessed Morning Sunlight, Which Comes To Us Like A Bright-winged Angel Beckoning Us To Quit The Old Path Of Vanity That Stretches Its Dreary Length Behind Us.

There's Good Chances And Bad Chances, And Nobody's Luck Is Pulled Only By One String.

Human Longings Are Perversely Obstinate; And To The Man Whose Mouth Is Watering For A Peach, It Is Of No Use To Offer The Largest Vegetable Marrow.

Better Spend An Extra Hundred Or Two On Your Son's Education, Than Leave It Him In Your Will.

Some People Are Born To Make Life Pretty, And Others To Grumble That It Is Not Pretty Enough.

That Golden Sky, Which Was The Doubly Blessed Symbol Of Advancing Day And Of Approaching Rest.

We Must Not Sit Still And Look For Miracles; Up And Doing, And The Lord Will Be With Thee. Prayer And Pains, Through Faith In Christ Jesus, Will Do Anything.

I Can't Abide To See Men Throw Away Their Tools I' That Way, The Minute The Clock Begins To Strike, As If They Took No Pleasure I' Their Work, And Was Afraid O' Doing A Stroke Too Much.... I Hate To See A Man's Arms Drop Down As If He Was Shot, Before The Clock's Fairly Struck, Just As If He'd Never A Bit O' Pride And Delight In's Work. The Very Grindstone 'ull Go On Turning A Bit After You Loose It.

Family Likeness Has Often A Deep Sadness In It. Nature, That Great Tragic Dramatist, Knits Us Together By Bone And Muscle, And Divides Us By The Subtler Web Of Our Brains; Blends Yearning And Repulsion; And Ties Us By Our Heart-strings To The Beings That Jar Us At Every Movement.

How Lovely The Little River Is, With Its Dark Changing Wavelets! It Seems To Me Like A Living Companion While I Wander Along The Bank, And Listen To Its Low, Placid Voice.

Wear A Smile And Have Friends; Wear A Scowl And Have Wrinkles.

... Goodness Is Of A Modest Nature, Easily Discouraged, And When Much Elbowed In Early Life By Unabashed Vices, Is Apt To Retire Into Extreme Privacy, So That It Is More Easily Believed In By Those Who Construct A Selfish Old Gentleman Theoretically, Than By Those Who Form The Narrower Judgments Based On His Personal Acquaintance.

Blessed Influence Of One True Loving Human Soul On Another! Not Calculable By Algebra, Not Deducible By Logic, But Mysterious, Effectual, Mighty As The Hidden Process By Which The Tiny Seed Is Quickened, And Bursts Forth Into Tall Stem And Broad Leaf, And Glowing Tasseled Flower.

I Am Influenced At The Present Time By Far Higher Considerations And By A Nobler Idea Of Duty Than I Ever Was When I Held The Evangelical Belief.

Self-consciousness Of The Manner Is The Expensive Substitute For Simplicity.

Are There Many Situations More Sublimely Tragic Than The Struggle Of The Soul With The Demand To Renounce A Work Which Has Been All The Significance Of Its Life--a Significance Which Is To Vanish As The Waters Which Come And Go Where No Man Has Need Of Them?

To An Old Memory Like Mine The Present Days Are But As A Little Water Poured On The Deep.

... Happy Husbands And Wives Can Hear Each Other Say The Same Thing Over And Over Again Without Being Tired.

Mighty Is The Force Of Motherhood! It Transforms All Things By Its Vital Heat.

I Tell You There Isn't A Thing Under The Sun That Needs To Be Done At All, But What A Man Can Do Better Than A Woman, Unless It's Bearing Children, And They Do That In A Poor Make-shift Way; It Had Better Ha Been Left To The Men.

There Is Much Pain That Is Quite Noiseless; And Vibrations That Make Human Agonies Are Often A Mere Whisper In The Roar Of Hurrying Existence. There Are Glances Of Hatred That Stab And Raise No Cry Of Murder; Robberies That Leave Man Or Woman For Ever Beggared Of Peace And Joy, Yet Kept Secret By The Sufferer --committed To No Sound Except That Of Low Moans In The Night, Seen In No Writing Except That Made On The Face By The Slow Months Of Suppressed Anguish And Early Morning Tears. Many An Inherited Sorrow That Has Marred A Life Has Been Breathed Into No Human Ear.

Wit Is A Form Of Force That Leaves The Limbs At Rest.

For My Part I Am Very Sorry For Him. 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--never To Be Fully Possessed By The Glory We Behold, Never To Have Our Consciousness Rapturously Transformed Into The Vividness Of A Thought, The Ardour Of A Passion, The Energy Of An Action, But Always To Be Scholarly And Uninspired, Ambitious And Timid, Scrupulous And Dimsighted.

But How Little We Know What Would Make Paradise For Our Neighbours! We Judge From Our Own Desires, And Our Neighbours Themselves Are Not Always Open Enough Even To Throw Out A Hint Of Theirs.

What Is Your Religion? I Mean-not What You Know About Religion But The Belief That Helps You Most?

A Proud Heart And A Lofty Mountain Are Never Fruitful.

Nice Distinctions Are Troublesome. It Is So Much Easier To Say That A Thing Is Black, Than To Discriminate The Particular Shade Of Brown, Blue, Or Green, To Which It Really Belongs. It Is So Much Easier To Make Up Your Mind That Your Neighbour Is Good For Nothing, Than To Enter Into All The Circumstances That Would Oblige You To Modify That Opinion.

Yes, Isaac Taylor, Who Has Just Published 'the World Of Mind,' Is The Isaac Taylor, Author Of The 'natural History Of Enthusiasm.' I Dare Say By This Time There Is A Want Of Fatty Particles In His Brain.

A Human Being In This Aged Nation Of Ours Is A Very Wonderful Hole, The Slow Creation Of Long Interchanging Influences; And Charm Is A Result Of Two Such Wholes, The One Loving And The One Loved.

... It Is One Thing To Like Defiance, And Another Thing To Like Its Consequences.

What Should I Do—how Should I Act Now, This Very Day . . . What She Would Resolve To Do That Day Did Not Yet Seem Quite Clear, But Something That She Could Achieve Stirred Her As With An Approaching Murmur Which Would Soon Gather Distinctness.

He Had The Superficial Kindness Of A Good-humored, Self-satisfied Nature, That Fears No Rivalry, And Has Encountered No Contrarieties.

An Ingenious Web Of Probabilities Is The Surest Screen A Wise Man Can Place Between Himself And The Truth.

There Are Some Cases In Which The Sense Of Injury Breeds Not The Will To Inflict Injuries And Climb Over Them As A Ladder, But A Hatred Of All Injury.

It's Easy Finding Reasons Why Other Folks Should Be Patient.

But With Regard To Critical Occasions, It Often Happens That All Moments Seem Comfortably Remote Until The Last.

Subtract From The New Testament The Miraculous And Highly Impossible, And What Will Be The Remainder?

It Is Very Difficult To Be Learned; It Seems As If People Were Worn Out On The Way To Great Thoughts, And Can Never Enjoy Them Because They Are Too Tired.

If The Past Is Not To Bind Us, Where Can Duty Lie? We Should Have No Law But The Inclination Of The Moment.

With Memory Set Smarting Like A Reopened Wound, A Man's Past Is Not Simply A Dead History, An Outworn Preparation Of The Present: It Is Not A Repented Error Shaken Loose From The Life: It Is A Still Quivering Part Of Himself, Bringing Shudders And Bitter Flavors And The Tinglings Of A Merited Shame.

A Good Horse Makes Short Miles.

How Can One Ever Do Anything Nobly Christian, Living Among People With Such Petty Thoughts?

There's Many A Good Bit O' Work Done With A Sad Heart.

Keep True, Never Be Ashamed Of Doing Right.

A Toddling Little Girl Is A Centre Of Common Feeling Which Makes The Most Dissimilar People Understand Each Other.

Teach Love, For That Is What You Are.

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.

Perhaps The Wind Wails So In Winter For The Summers Dead, And All Sad Sounds Are Nature's Funeral Cries For What Has Been And Is Not.

In Our Spring-time Every Day Has Its Hidden Growths In The Mind, As It Has In The Earth When The Little Folded Blades Are Getting Ready To Pierce The Ground.

No Story Is The Same To Us After A Lapse Of Time; Or Rather We Who Read It Are No Longer The Same Interpreters.

People Glorify All Sorts Of Bravery Except The Bravery They Might Show On Behalf Of Their Nearest Neighbors.

The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music.

I Found It Better For My Soul To Be Humble Before The Mysteries O' God's Dealings, And Not Be Making A Clatter About What I Could Never Understand.

If A Woman's Young And Pretty, I Think You Can See Her Good Looks All The Better For Her Being Plainly Dressed.

Hatred Is Like Fire, It Makes Even Light Rubbish Deadly.

There Are Men Whose Presence Infuses Trust And Reverence.

But Let The Wise Be Warned Against Too Great Readiness To Explanation: It Multiplies The Sources Of Mistake, Lengthening The Sum For Reckoners Sure To Go Wrong.

I Cherish My Childish Loves--the Memory Of That Warm Little Nest Where My Affections Were Fledged.

A Woman's Heart Must Be Of Such A Size And No Larger, Else It Must Be Pressed Small, Like Chinese Feet; Her Happiness Is To Be Made As Cakes Are, By A Fixed Recipe.

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

I've Had My Say Out, And I Shall Be The' Easier For't All My Life. There's No Pleasure I' Living, If You're To Be Corked Up Forever, And Only Dribble Your Mind Out By The Sly, Like A Leaky Barrel.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun.

Opposition May Become Sweet To A Man When He Has Christened It Persecution.

It Is One Thing To See Your Road, Another To Cut It.

It Is, I Fear, But A Vain Show Of Fulfilling The Heathen Precept, ''know Thyself,'' And Too Often Leads To A Self- Estimate Which Will Subsist In The Absence Of That Fruit By Which Alone The Quality Of The Tree Is Made Evident.

Speech May Be Barren; But It Is Ridiculous To Suppose That Silence Is Always Brooding On A Nestful Of Eggs.

One Has To Spend So Many Years In Learning How To Be Happy. I Am Just Beginning To Make Some Progress In The Science, And I Hope To Disprove Young's Theory That "as Soon As We Have Found The Key Of Life It Opes The Gates Of Death." Every Year Strips Us Of At Least One Vain Expectation, And Teaches Us To Reckon Some Solid Good In Its Stead. I Never Will Believe That Our Youngest Days Are Our Happiest. What A Miserable Augury For The Progress Of The Race And The Destination Of The Individual If The More Matured And Enlightened State Is The Less Happy One!

Habit Is The Beneficent Harness Of Routine Which Enables Silly Men To Live Respectfully And Unhappy Men To Live Calmly

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.

Adventure Is Not Outside Man; It Is Within.

Deep, Unspeakable Suffering May Well Be Called A Baptism, A Regeneration, The Initiation Into A New State. Suffering Can Be Likened To A Baptism - The Passing Over The Threshold Of Pain And Grief And Anguish To Claim A New State Of Being.

The Pride Of The Body Is A Barrier Against The Gifts That Purify The Soul.

In So Complex A Thing As Human Nature, We Must Consider It Is Hard To Find Rules Without Exception.

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.

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.

The Sense Of An Entailed Disadvantage - The Deformed Foot Doubtfully Hidden By The Shoe, Makes A Restlessly Active Spiritual Yeast, And Easily Turns A Self-centered, Unloving Nature Into An Ishmaelite.

I Am Feeling Easy Now, And You Will Well Understand That After Undergoing Pain This Ease Is Opening Paradise. Invalids Must Be Excused For Being Eloquent About Themselves.

Signs Are Small Measurable Things, But Interpretations Are Illimitable, And In Girls Of Sweet, Ardent Nature, Every Sign Is Apt To Conjure Up Wonder, Hope, Belief, Vast As A Sky, And Colored By A Thimbleful Of Matter In The Shape Of Knowledge....wrong Reasoning Sometimes Lands Poor Mortals In Right Conclusions: 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. Just Because Miss Brooke Was Hasty In Her Trust, It Is Not Therefore Clear That Mr. Casaubon Was Unworthy Of It.

Veracity Is A Plant Of Paradise, And The Seeds Have Never Flourished Beyond The Walls.

The Usual Attitude Of Christians Towards Jews Is - I Hardly Know Whether To Say More Impious Or More Stupid, When Viewed In The Light Of Their Professed Principles. ... They Hardly Know Christ Was A Jew. And I Find Men, Educated, Supposing That Christ Spoke Greek. To My Feeling, This Deadness To The History Which Has Prepared Half Our World For Us, This Inability To Find Interest In Any Form Of Life That Is Not Clad In The Same Coat-tails And Flounces As Our Own, Lies Very Close To The Worst Kind Of Irreligion.

The Most Powerful Movement Of Feeling With A Liturgy Is The Prayer Which Seeks For Nothing Special, But Is A Yearning To Escape From The Limitations Of Our Own Weakness And An Invocation Of All Good To Enter And Abide With Us.

We Are All Apt To Believe What The World Believes About Us.

Friendships Begin With Liking Or Gratitude- Roots That Can Be Pulled Up.

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat Itself, And To Foist Very Old Incidents Upon Us With Only A Slight Change Of Costume.

... It Is One Of The Gains Of Advancing Age That The Good Of Young Creatures Becomes A More Definite Intense Joy To Us. With That Renunciation For Ourselves Which Age Inevitably Brings, We Get More Freedom Of Soul To Enter Into The Life Of Others; What We Can Never Learn They Will Know, And The Gladness Which Is A Departed Sunlight To Us Is Rising With The Strength Of Morning To Them.

Looking At Your Life As A Debt May Seem The Dreariest View Of Things At A Distance; But It Cannot Really Be So. What Makes Life Dreary Is The Want Of Motive; But Once Beginning To Act With The Penitential, Loving Purpose You Have In Your Mind, There Will Be Unexpected Satisfactions--there Will Be Newly-opening Needs--continually Coming To Carry You On From Day To Day. You Will Find Your Life Growing Like A Plant.

It Is A Sad Weakness In Us, After All, That The Thought Of A Man's Death Hallows Him Anew To Us; As If Life Were Not Sacred Too.

Impatient People, According To Bacon, Are Like The Bees, And Kill Themselves In Stinging Others.

Genius ... Is Necessarily Intolerant Of Fetters.

Each Thought Is A Nail That Is Driven In Structures That Cannot Decay; And The Mansion At Last Will Be Given To Us As We Build It Each Day.

A Human Life, I Think, Should Be Well Rooted In Some Spot Of A Native Land, Where It May Get The Love Of Tender Kinship For The Face Of Earth, For The Labors Men Go Forth To, For The Sounds And Accents That Haunt It, For Whatever Will Give That Early Home A Familiar, Unmistakable Difference Amidst The Future Widening Of Knowledge.

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.

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!

Speech Is But Broken Light Upon The Depth Of The Unspoken.

There Is No Sort Of Wrong Deed Of Which A Man Can Bear The Punishment Alone; You Can't Isolate Yourself And Say That The Evil That Is In You Shall Not Spread. Men's Lives Are As Thoroughly Blended With Each Other As The Air They Breathe; Evil Spreads As Necessarily As Disease.

All The Learnin' My Father Ever Paid For Was A Bit O' Birch At One End And The Alphabet At Th ' Other.

Mighty Is The Force Of Motherhood! It Transforms All Things By Its Vital Heat; It Turns Timidity Into Fierce Courage, And Dreadless Defiance Into Tremulous Submission; It Turns Thoughtlessness Into Foresight, And Yet Stills All Anxiety Into Calm Content; It Makes Selfishness Become Self-denial, And Gives Even To Hard Vanity The Glance Of Admiring Love.

Miserliness Is A Capital Quality To Run In Families; It's The Safe Side For Madness To Dip On.

Death Was Not To Be A Leap: It Was To Be A Long Descent Under Thickening Shadows.

Better A Wrong Will Than A Wavering; Better A Steadfast Enemy Than An Uncertain Friend; Better A False Belief Than No Belief At All.

The Human Heart Finds Nowhere Shelter But In Human Kind.

If People Will Be Censors, Let Them Weigh Their Words. I Mean That The Words Were Unfair By That Disproportionateness Of The Condemnation, Which Everybody With Some Conscience Must Feel To Be One Of The Great Difficulties In Denouncing A Particular Person. Every Unpleasant Dog Is Only One Of Many, But We Kick Him Because He Comes In Our Way, And There Is Always Some Want Of Distributive Justice In The Kicking.

Childhood Is Only The Beautiful And Happy Time In Contemplation And Retrospect: To The Child It Is Full Of Deep Sorrows, The Meaning Of Which Is Unknown.

That Quiet Mutual Gaze Of A Trusting Husband And Wife Is Like The First Moment Of Rest Or Refuge From A Great Weariness Or A Great Danger-not To Be Interfered With By Speech Or Action Which Would Distract The Sensations From The Fresh Enjoyment Of Repose.

To Men Who Only Aim At Escaping Felony, Nothing Short Of The Prisoner's Dock Is Disgrace.

The Men Are Mostly So Slow, Their Thoughts Overrun 'em, An' They Can Only Catch 'em By The Tail. I Can Count A Stocking-top While A Man's Getting's Tongue Ready; An' When He Outs Wi' His Speech At Last, There's Little Broth To Be Made On't. It's Your Dead Chicks Take The Longest Hatchin'.

Uncomfortable Thoughts Must Be Got Rid Of By Good Intentions For The Future.

Good Intentions

She Hates Everything That Is Not What She Longs For.

We Get A Deal O' Useless Things About Us, Only Because We've Got The Money To Spend.

Hold Up Your Head! You Were Not Made For Failure, You Were Made For Victory. Go Forward With A Joyful Confidence.

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.

I'm Not Denyin' The Women Are Foolish. God Almighty Made 'em To Match The Men.

No Soul Is Desolate As Long As There Is A Human Being For Whom It Can Feel Trust And Reverence.

Appearances Have Very Little To Do With Happiness.

No Man Is Matriculated To The Art Of Life Till He Has Been Well Tempted.

Pride Helps Us; And Pride Is Not A Bad Thing When It Only Urges Us To Hide Our Own Hurts—not To Hurt Others.

Worldly Faces Never Look So Worldly As At A Funeral.

Shall We, Because We Walk On Our Hind Feet, Assume To Ourselves Only The Privilege Of Imperishability?

I Would Rather Not Be Engaged. When People Are Engaged, They Begin To Think Of Being Married Soon, And I Should Like Everything To Go On For A Long While Just As It Is.

It Is Time The Clergy Are Told That Thinking Men, After A Close Examination Of That Doctrine, Pronounce It To Be Subversive Of True Moral Development And, Therefore, Positively Noxious.

I Beg Your Pardon: Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs Who Write History And Essays. And The Strongest Slang Of All Is The Slang Of Poets.

Sir Joshua Would Have Been Glad To Take Her Portrait; And He Would Have Had An Easier Task Than The Historian At Least In This, That He Would Not Have Had To Represent The Truth Of Change - Only To Give Stability To One Beautiful Moment.

You Youngsters Nowadays Think You're To Begin With Living Well And Working Easy; You've No Notion Of Running Afoot Before You Get On Horseback.

A Girl Of Eighteen Imagines The Feelings Behind The Face That Has Moved Her With Its Sympathetic Youth As Easily As Primitive People Imagined The Humors Of The Gods In Fair Weather. What Is She To Believe In If Not In This Vision Woven From Within?

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.

The Best Part Of A Woman's Love Is Worship; But It Is Hard To Her To Be Sent Away With Her Precious Spikenard Rejected, And Her Long Tresses, Too, That Were Let Fall, Ready To Soothe The Wearied Feet.

Awful Night! Ancestral Mystery Of Mysteries.

We Mustn't Be In A Hurry To Fix And Choose Our Own Lot; We Must Wait To Be Guided.

Only Those Who Know The Supremacy Of The Intellectual Life──the Life Which Has A Seed Of Ennobling Thought And Purpose Within──can Understand The Grief Of One Who Falls From That Serene Activity Into The Absorbing Soul-wasting Struggle With Worldly Annoyances.

I Take A Dose Of Mathematics Every Day To Prevent My Brain From Becoming Quite Soft.

I Think I Should Have No Other Mortal Wants, If I Could Always Have Plenty Of Music.

Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical.

Human Experience

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.

What To One Man Is The Virtue Which He Has Sunk Below The Possibility Of Aspiring To, Is To Another The Backsliding By Which He Forfeits His Spiritual Crown.

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.

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.

I Think There Are Stores Laid Up In Our Human Nature That Our Understandings Can Make No Complete Inventory Of.

He Who Rules Must Fully Humor As Much As He Commands.

Ah, I Often Think It's Wi' Th' Old Folks As It Is Wi' The Babies; They're Satisfied Wi' Looking, No Matter What They're Looking At. It's God A'mighty's Way O' Quietening 'em, I Reckon, Afore They Go To Sleep.

When We Get To Wishing A Great Deal For Ourselves, Whatever We Get Soon Turns Into Mere Limitation And Exclusion.

Love Is Frightened At The Intervals Of Insensibility And Callousness That Encroach By Little And Little On The Domain Of Grief, And It Makes Efforts To Recall The Keenness Of The First Anguish.

Old Men's Eyes Are Like Old Men's Memories; They Are Strongest For Things A Long Way Off.

We Reap What We Sow, But Nature Has Love Over And Above That Justice, And Gives Us Shadow And Blossom And Fruit, That Spring From No Planting Of Ours.

The Years Seem To Rush By Now, And I Think Of Death As A Fast Approaching End Of A Journey-double And Treble Reason For Loving As Well As Working While It Is Day.

Even Success Needs Its Consolations.

Education Was Almost Entirely A Matter Of Luck — Usually Of Ill-luck — In Those Distant Days.

The Words Of Genius Have A Wider Meaning Than The Thought That Prompted Them.

I Shall Never Love Anybody. I Can't Love People. I Hate Them.' 'the Time Will Come, Dear, The Time Will Come.

I'm Proof Against That Word Failure. I've Seen Behind It. The Only Failure A Man Ought To Fear Is Failure Of Cleaving To The Purpose He Sees To Be Best.

Marriage, Which Has Been The Bourne Of So Many Narratives, Is Still A Great Beginning, As It Was To Adam And Eve, Who Kept Their Honey-moon In Eden, But Had Their First Little One Among The Thorns And Thistles Of The Wilderness. It Is Still The Beginning Of The Home Epic - The Gradual Conquest Or Irremediable Loss Of That Complete Union Which Make The Advancing Years A Climax, And Age The Harvest Of Sweet Memories In Common.

I Should Like To Know What Is The Proper Function Of Women, If It Is Not To Make Reasons For Husbands To Stay At Home, And Still Stronger Reasons For Bachelors To Go Out.

A Peasant Can No More Help Believing In A Traditional Superstition Than A Horse Can Help Trembling When Be Sees A Camel.

And Certainly, The Mistakes That We Male And Female Mortals Make When We Have Our Own Way Might Fairly Raise Some Wonder That We Are So Fond Of It.

The Wit Of A Family Is Usually Best Received Among Strangers.

Them As Ha' Never Had A Cushion Don't Miss It.

If Youth Is The Season Of Hope, It Is Often So Only In The Sense That Our Elders Are Hopeful About Us; For No Age Is So Apt As Youth To Think Its Emotions, Partings, And Resolves Are The Last Of Their Kind. Each Crisis Seems Final, Simply Because It Is New. We Are Told That The Oldest Inhabitants In Peru Do Not Cease To Be Agitated By The Earthquakes, But They Probably See Beyond Each Shock, And Reflect That There Are Plenty More To Come.

Affection Is The Broadest Basis Of A Good Life.

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat Itself.

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Hans Christian Andersen

Hans-Georg Gadamer

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