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Can Anything Be More Disgusting Than To Hear People Called 'educated' Making Small Jokes About Eating Ham, And Showing Themselves Empty Of Any Real Knowledge As To The Relation Of Their Own Social And Religious Life To The History Of The People They Think Themselves Witty In Insulting? [...] The Best Thing That Can Be Said Of It Is, That It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Narrowness—in Plain English, The Stupidity Which Is Still The Average Mark Of Our Culture.

-George Eliot

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Can Anything Be More

George Eliot

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Can Anything Be More Disgusting Than To Hear People Called 'educated' Making Small Jokes About Eating Ham, And Showing Themselves Empty Of Any Real Knowledge As To The Relation Of Their Own Social And Religious Life To The History Of The People They Think Themselves Witty In Insulting? [...] The Best Thing That Can Be Said Of It Is, That It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Narrowness—in Plain English, The Stupidity Which Is Still The Average Mark Of Our Culture.

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More From George Eliot

The Desire To Conquer Is Itself A Sort Of Subjection.

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

What Makes Life Dreary Is The Want Of A Motive.

It Is Pleasant To Have A Kind Word Now And Then When One Is Not Near Enough To Have A Kind Glance Or A Hearty Shake By The Hand.

It's Well Known There's Always Two Sides, If No More.

When You See Fair Hair Be Pitiful.

In The Vain Laughter Of Folly Wisdom Hears Half Its Applause.

There Is A Sort Of Human Paste That When It Comes Near The Fire Of Enthusiasm Is Only Baked Into Harder Shape.

Sympathetic People Often Don't Communicate Well, They Back Reflected Images Which Hide Their Own Depths.

Religious Ideas Have The Fate Of Melodies, Which, Once Set Afloat In The World, Are Taken Up By All Sorts Of Instruments, Some Of Them Woefully Coarse, Feeble, Or Out Of Tune, Until People Are In Danger Of Crying Out That The Melody Itself Is Detestable.

Friendship Is The Inexpressible Comfort Of Feeling Safe With A Person, Having Neither To Weigh Thoughts Nor Measure Words.

... The Fallibility Of Human Brains Is In Nothing More Obvious Than In Proof Reading.

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.

Opinions: Men's Thoughts About Great Subjects. Taste: Their Thoughts About Small Ones: Dress, Behavior, Amusements, Ornaments.

I Will To Make Life Less Bitter For A Few Within My Reach.

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.

People Who Write Finely Must Not Expect To Be Left In Repose; They Will Be Molested With Thanks, At Least.

Our Vanities Differ As Our Noses Do: All Conceit Is Not The Same Conceit, But Varies In Correspondence With The Minutiae Of Mental Make In Which One Of Us Differs From Another.

Where You Have Friends You Should Not Go To Inns.

The Strength Of The Donkey Mind Lies In Adopting A Course Inversely As The Arguments Urged, Which, Well Considered, Requires As Great A Mental Force As The Direct Sequence.

Pity That Consequences Are Determined Not By Excuses But By Actions!

Ignorance ... Is A Painless Evil; So, I Should Think, Is Dirt, Considering The Merry Faces That Go Along With It.

To Have Suffered Much Is Like Knowing Many Languages. Thou Hast Learned To Understand All.

We Long For An Affection Altogether Ignorant Of Our Faults. Heaven Has Accorded This To Us In The Uncritical Canine Attachment.

Love Supreme Defies All Sophistry.

Genius Is The Capacity For Receiving And Improving By Discipline.

It Is The Way With Half The Truth Amidst Which We Live, That It Only Haunts Us And Makes Dull Pulsations That Are Never Born Into Sound.

The Darkest Night That Ever Fell Upon The Earth Never Hid The Light, Never Put Out The Stars. It Only Made The Stars More Keenly, Kindly Glancing, As If In Protest Against The Darkness.

Whatever May Be The Success Of My Stories, I Shall Be Resolute In Preserving My Incognito, Having Observed That A Nom De Plume Secures All The Advantages Without The Disagreeables Of Reputation.

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

Consequences Are Unpitying. Our Deeds Carry Their Terrible Consequences, Quite Apart From Any Fluctuations That Went Before—consequences That Are Hardly Ever Confined To Ourselves. And It Is Best To Fix Our Minds On That Certainty, Instead Of Considering What May Be The Elements Of Excuse For Us.

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.

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

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

Good Intentions

That Farewell Kiss Which Resembles Greeting, That Last Glance Of Love Which Becomes The Sharpest Pang Of Sorrow.

Boots And Shoes Are The Greatest Trouble Of My Life. Everything Else One Can Turn And Turn About, And Make Old Look Like New; But There's No Coaxing Boots And Shoes To Look Better Than They Are.

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

A Maggot Must Be Born I' The Rotten Cheese To Like It.

When One Is Five-and-twenty, One Has Not Chalk-stones At One's Finger-ends That The Touch Of A Handsome Girl Should Be Entirely Indifferent.

... The True Seeing Is Within; And Painting Stares At You With An Insistent Imperfection.

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

When One Is Grateful For Something Too Good For Common Thanks, Writing Is Less Unsatisfactory Than Speech-one Does Not, At Least, Hear How Inadequate The Words Are.

Imagination Is A Licensed Trespasser: It Has No Fear Of Dogs, But May Climb Over Walls And Peep In At Windows With Impunity.

... One's Own Faults Are Always A Heavy Chain To Drag Through Life And One Can't Help Groaning Under The Weight Now And Then.

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.

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.

Men And Women Are But Children Of A Larger Growth.

There Are Natures In Which, If They Love Us, We Are Conscious Of Having A Sort Of Baptism And Consecration.

Those Bitter Sorrows Of Childhood!-- When Sorrow Is All New And Strange, When Hope Has Not Yet Got Wings To Fly Beyond The Days And Weeks, And The Space From Summer To Summer Seems Measureless.

The Troublesome Ones In A Family Are Usually Either The Wits Or The Idiots.

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.

Time, Like Money, Is Measured By Our Needs.

One Has To Spend Many Years In Learning How To Be Happy.

How To Be Happy

The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music.

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.

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.

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

The Poverty Of Our Imagination Is No Measure Of Say The World's Resources. Our Posterity Will No Doubt Get Fuel In Ways That We Are Unable To Devise For Them.

The Bow Always Strung ... Will Not Do.

Fatally Powerful As Religious Systems Have Been, Human Nature Is Stronger And Wider, And Though Dogmas May Hamper They Cannot Absolutely Repress Its Growth.

It Was Not That She Was Out Of Temper, But That The World Was Not Equal To The Demands Of Her Fine Organism.

Explain! Tell A Man To Explain How He Dropped Into Hell! Explain My Preference! I Never Had A Preference For Her, Any More Than I Have A Preference For Breathing. No Other Woman Exists By The Side Of Her. I Would Rather Touch Her Hand If It Were Dead, Than I Would Touch Any Other Woman's Living.

The Stars Are Golden Fruit Upon A Tree All Out Of Reach.

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.

Genius At First Is Little More Than A Great Capacity For Receiving Discipline.

And We Must Learn To Accommodate Ourselves To The Discovery That Some Of Those Cunningly-fashioned Instruments Called Human Souls Have Only A Very Limited Range Of Music, And Will Not Vibrate In The Least Under A Touch That Fills Others With Tremulous Rapture Or Quivering Agony.

Even Success Needs Its Consolations.

There Are Moments When Our Passions Speak And Decide For Us ... Like A Fire Kindled Within Our Being To Which Everything Else In Us Is Mere Fuel.

The Egoism Which Enters Into Our Theories Does Not Affect Their Sincerity; Rather, The More Our Egoism Is Satisfied, The More Robust Is Our Belief.

And, Of Course Men Know Best About Everything, Except What Women Know Better.

It's But Little Good You'll Do A-watering The Last Year's Crops

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

Hopes Have Precarious Life. They Are Oft Blighted, Withered, Snapped Sheer Off In Vigorous Growth And Turned To Rottenness.

All Meanings, We Know, Depend On The Key Of Interpretation.

A Man Deep-wounded May Feel Too Much Pain To Feel Much Anger.

As To People Saying A Few Idle Words About Us, We Must Not Mind That, Any More Than The Old Church Steeple Minds The Rooks Cawing About It.

A Difference Of Taste In Jokes Is A Great Strain On The Affections.

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

The Tendency Toward Good In Human Nature Has A Force Which No Creed Can Utterly Counteract, And Which Insures The Ultimate Triumph Of That Tendency Over All Dogmatic Perversions.

Loquacity With Tongue Or Pen Is Its Own Reward -- Or, Punishment.

The Press Has No Band Of Critics Who Go The Round Of The Churches And Chapels, And Are On The Watch For A Slip Or Defect In The Preacher, To Make A 'feature' In Their Article: The Clergy Are, Practically, The Most Irresponsible Of All Talkers.

Teach Love, For That Is What You Are.

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.

I Easily Sink Into Mere Absorption Of What Other Minds Have Done, And Should Like A Whole Life For That Alone.

Does Any One Suppose That Private Prayer Is Necessarily Candid--necessarily Goes To The Roots Of Action! Private Prayer Is Inaudible Speech, And Speech Is Representative: Who Can Represent Himself Just As He Is, Even In His Own Reflections?

Those Who Trust Us Educate Us.

Perhaps There Is No Time In A Summer's Day More Cheering, Than When The Warmth Of The Sun Is Just Beginning To Triumph Over The Freshness Of The Morning--when There Is Just A Lingering Hint Of Early Coolness To Keep Off Languor Under The Delicious Influence Of Warmth.

Man Cannot Choose His Duties.

Perhaps His Might Be One Of The Natures Where A Wise Estimate Of Consequences Is Fused In The Fires Of That Passionate Belief Which Determines The Consequences It Believes In.

Life Began With Waking Up And Loving My Mother's Face.

Surely There Was Something Taught Her By This Experience Of Great Need; And She Must Be Learning A Secret Of Human Tenderness And Long-suffering, That The Less Erring Could Hardly Know?

In All Failures, The Beginning Is Certainly The Half Of The Whole.

Doesn't This Quote Just Call Up Feelings Of Comfort And Home? Comparing Friendship To The Nest A Bird Lives In And Builds With Loving Determination Reminds Me That Having A Solid Relationship Takes Work And Dedication. And Yet, When You Succeed In Crafting A Friendship, You Can Rest In The Comfort It Provides.

Errors Look So Very Ugly In Persons Of Small Means -one Feels They Are Taking Quite A Liberty In Going Astray; Whereas People Of Fortune May Naturally Indulge In A Few Delinquencies.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

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

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.

It Is A Wonderful Subduer, This Need Of Love-this Hunger Of The Heart-as Peremptory As That Other Hunger By Which Nature Forces Us To Submit To The Yoke, And Change The Face Of The World.

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.

A Prig Is A Fellow Who Is Always Making You A Present Of His Opinions.

A Blush Is No Language; Only A Dubious Flag - Signal Which May Mean Either Of Two Contradictories

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.

Whether Happiness May Come Or Not, One Should Try And Prepare One's Self To Do Without It.

They The Royal-hearted Women Are Who Nobly Love The Noblest, Yet Have Grace For Needy Suffering Lives In Lowliest Place, Carrying A Choicer Sunlight In Their Smile, The Heavenliest Ray That Pitieth The Vile.

Those Old Stories Of Visions And Dreams Guiding Men Have Their Truth; We Are Saved By Making The Future Present To Ourselves.

One Of The Tortures Of Jealousy Is, That It Can Never Turn Away Its Eyes From The Thing That Pains It.

A Fine Lady Is A Squirrel-headed Thing, With Small Airs And Small Notions; About As Applicable To The Business Of Life As A Pair Of Tweezers To The Clearing Of A Forest.

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

Half The Sorrows Of Women Would Be Averted If They Could Repress The Speech They Know To Be Useless-nay, The Speech They Have Resolved Not To Utter.

I've Never Any Pity For Conceited People, Because I Think They Carry Their Comfort About With Them.

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.

Thought Has Joys Apart, Even In Blackest Woe, And Seizing Some Fine Thread Of Verity Knows Momentary Godhead.

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.

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

It Is Always Fatal To Have Music Or Poetry Interrupted.

It Is Only A Poor Sort Of Happiness That Could Ever Come By Caring Very Much About Our Own Pleasures. We Can Only Have The Highest Happiness Such As Goes Along With Being A Great Man, By Having Wide Thoughts And Much Feeling For The Rest Of The World As Well As Ourselves.

Perhaps The Most Delightful Friendships Are Those In Which There Is Much Agreement, Much Disputation, And Yet More Personal Liking.

Vague Memories Hang About The Mind Like Cobwebs.

There's Nothing But What's Bearable As Long As A Man Can Work.... The Square O' Four Is Sixteen, And You Must Lengthen Your Lever In Proportion To Your Weight, Is As True When A Man's Miserable As When He's Happy; And The Best O' Working Is, It Gives You A Grip Hold O' Things Outside Your Own Lot.

Tis A Petty Kind Of Fame At Best, That Comes Of Making Violins; And Saves No Masses, Either. Thou Wilt Go To Purgatory None The Less.

Religion Can Only Change When The Emotions Which Fill It Are Changed; And The Religion Of Personal Fear Remains Nearly At The Level Of The Savage.

Our Selfishness Is So Robust And Many-clutching That, Well Encouraged, It Easily Devours All Sustenance Away From Our Poor Little Scruples.

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.

Those Only Can Thoroughly Feel The Meaning Of Death Who Know What Is Perfect Love.

Obligation May Be Stretched Till It Is No Better Than A Brand Of Slavery Stamped On Us When We Were Too Young To Know Its Meaning.

So Shall I Join The Choir Invisible Whose Music Is The Gladness Of The World.

There Is A Chill Air Surrounding Those Who Are Down In The World, And People Are Glad To Get Away From Them, As From A Cold Room.

Much Of Our Waking Experience Is But A Dream In The Daylight.

So To Live Is Heaven; To Make Undying Music In The World.

There Is A Sort Of Subjection Which Is The Peculiar Heritage Of Largeness And Of Love; And Strength Is Often Only Another Name For Willing Bondage To Irremediable Weakness.

The Commonest Man, Who Has His Ounce Of Sense And Feeling, Is Conscious Of The Difference Between A Lovely, Delicate Woman And A Coarse One. Even A Dog Feels A Difference In Her Presence.

To Think Of The Part One Little Woman Can Play In The Life Of A Man, So That To Renounce Her May Be A Very Good Imitation Of Heroism, And To Win Her May Be A Discipline.

...though There's Reasons In Things As Nobody Knows On---- That's Pretty Much What I've Made Out; Yet Some Folks Are So Wise They'll Find You Fifty Reasons Straight Off, And All The While The Real Reason's Winking At 'em In The Corner, And They Niver See't.

Great Love Has Many Attributes, And Shrines For Varied Worshippers, But His Force Divine Shows Most Its Many-named Fulness In The Man Whose Nature Multitudinously Mixed-- Each Ardent Impulse Grappling With A Thought-- Resists All Easy Gladness, All Content Save Mystic Rapture, Where The Questioning Soul Flooded With Consciousness Of Good That Is Finds Life One Bounteous Answer.

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.

How Should All The Apparatus Of Heaven And Earth Make Poetry For A Mind That Had No Movements Of Awe And Tenderness, No Sense Of Fellowship Which Thrills From The Near To The Distant, And Back Again From The Distant To The Near?

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

Delicious Autumn! My Very Soul Is Wedded To It, And If I Were A Bird I Would Fly About The Earth Seeking The Successive Autumns.

The Worst Service, I Fancy, That Anyone Can Do For Truth, Is To Set Silly People Writing On Its Behalf.

If We Only Look Far Enough Off For The Consequence Of Our Actions, We Can Always Find Some Point In The Combination Of Results By Which Those Actions Can Be Justified: By Adopting The Point Of View Of A Providence Who Arranges Results, Or Of A Philosopher Who Traces Them, We Shall Find It Possible To Obtain Perfect Complacency In Choosing To Do What Is Most Agreeable To Us In The Present Moment.

I Hold It A Blasphemy To Say That A Man Ought Not To Fight Against Authority: There Is No Great Religion And No Great Freedom That Has Not Done It, In The Beginning.

Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are.

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.

Our Impartiality Is Kept For Abstract Merit And Demerit, Which None Of Us Ever Saw.

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 Best Augury Of A Man's Success In His Profession Is That He Thinks It The Finest In The World.

Congratulations

For Pain Must Enter Into Its Glorified Life Of Memory Before It Can Turn Into Compassion.

What Is Better Than To Love And Live With The Loved? -- But That Must Sometimes Bring Us To Live With The Dead; And This Too Turns At Last Into A Very Tranquil And Sweet Tie, Safe From Change And Injury.

Speech Is Often Barren; But Silence Also Does Not Necessarily Brood Over A Full Nest.

The Sweetest Of All Success Is That Which One Wins By Hard Exertion.

When I Married Humphrey I Made Up My Mind To Like Sermons, And I Set Out By Liking The End Very Much. That Soon Spread To The Middle And The Beginning, Because I Couldn't Have The End Without Them.

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.

As They Who Make Good Luck A God Count All Unlucky Men.

To My Thinking, It Is More Pitiable To Bore Than To Be Bored.

Acting Is Nothing More Or Less Than Playing. The Idea Is To Humanize Life.

Fate Has Carried Me 'mid The Thick Arrows: I Will Keep My Stand Not Shrink And Let The Shaft Pass By My Breast To Pierce Another.

Net The Large Fish And You Are Sure To Have The Small Fry.

The Best Travel Is That Which One Can Take By One's Own Fireside. In Memory Or Imagination.

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

Saints And Martyrs Had Never Interested Maggie So Much As Sages And Poets.

Though I Am Not Endowed With An Ear To Seize Those Earthly Harmonies, Which To Some Devout Souls Have Seemed, As It Were, The Broken Echoes Of The Heavenly Choir--i Apprehend That There Is A Law In Music, Disobedience Whereunto Would Bring Us In Our Singing To The Level Of Shrieking Maniacs Or Howling Beasts.

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

But Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical, That Means Incongruous With The Phrases Of Current Talk Or Even Current Philosophy.

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.

Among The Blessings Of Love There Is Hardly One More Exquisite Than The Sense That In Uniting The Beloved Life To Ours We Can Watch Over Its Happiness, Bring Comfort Where Hardship Was, And Over Memories Of Privation And Suffering Open The Sweetest Fountains Of Joy.

What A Different Result One Gets By Changing The Metaphor!

So Deeply Inherent Is It In This Life Of Ours That Men Have To Suffer For Each Other's Sins, So Inevitably Diffusive Is Human Suffering, That Even Justice Makes Its Victims, And We Can Conceive No Retribution That Does Not Spread Beyond Its Mark In Pulsations Of Unmerited Pain.

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

Where Jack Isn't Safe, Tom's In Danger.

Love Has A Way Of Cheating Itself Consciously, Like A Child Who Plays At Solitary Hide-and-seek; It Is Pleased With Assurances That It All The While Disbelieves.

He Was Of An Impressible Nature, And Lived A Great Deal In Other People's Opinions And Feelings Concerning Himself.

I Like Not Only To Be Loved, But Also To Be Told I Am Loved.

Quick Souls Have Their Intensest Life In The First Anticipatory Sketch Of What May Or Will Be, And The Pursuit Of Their Wish Is The Pursuit Of That Paradisiacal Vision Which Only Impelled Them, And Is Left Farther And Farther Behind, Vanishing Forever Even Out Of Hope In The Moment Which Is Called Success.

Excellence Encourages One About Life Generally; It Shows The Spiritual Wealth Of The World.

I Think Any Hardship Is Better Than Pretending To Do What One Is Paid For, And Never Really Doing It.

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.

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

It Is In The Nature Of Foolish Reasonings To Seem Good To The Foolish Reasoner.

A Good Horse Makes Short Miles.

The Select Natures Who Pant After The Ideal, And Find Nothing In Pantaloons Or Petticoats Great Enough To Command Their Reverence And Love, Are Curiously In Unison With The Narrowest And Pettiest.

To Fear The Examination Of Any Proposition Apears To Me An Intellectual And A Moral Palsy That Will Ever Hinder The Firm Grasping Of Any Substance Whatever.

The Difficult Task Of Knowing Another Soul Is Not For Young Gentlemen Whose Consciousness Is Chiefly Made Up Of Their Own Wishes.

Anger Seek It Prey,-- Something To Tear With Sharp-edged Tooth And Claw, Like Not To Go Off Hungry, Leaving Love To Feast On Milk And Honeycomb At Will.

Perspective, As Its Inventor Remarked, Is A Beautiful Thing. What Horrors Of Damp Huts, Where Human Beings Languish, May Not Become Picturesque Through Aerial Distance! What Hymning Of Cancerous Vices May We Not Languish Over As Sublimest Art In The Safe Remoteness Of A Strange Language And Artificial Phrase! Yet We Keep A Repugnance To Rheumatism And Other Painful Effects When Presented In Our Personal Experience.

You Are Discontented With The World Because You Can't Get Just The Small Things That Suit Your Pleasure, Not Because It's A World Where Myriads Of Men And Women Are Ground By Wrong And Misery, And Tainted With Pollution.

If We Need A True Conception Of The Popular Character To Guide Our Sympathies Rightly, We Need It Equally To Check Our Theories, And Direct Us In Their Application.

It's No Trifle At Her Time At Her Time Of Life To Part With A Doctor Who Knows Her Constitution.

I Could Not Without Vile Hypocrisy And A Miserable Truckling To The Smile Of The World ... Profess To Join In Worship Which I Wholly Disapprove.

There Are Robberies That Leave Man Or Woman Forever Beggared Of Peace And Joy, Yet Kept Secret By The Sufferer.

Nature Has Her Language, And She Is Not Unveracious; But We Don't Know All The Intricacies Of Her Syntax Just Yet, And In A Hasty Reading We May Happen To Extract The Very Opposite Of Her Real Meaning.

It Is Painful To Be Told That Anything Is Very Fine And Not Be Able To Feel That It Is Fine--something Like Being Blind, While People Talk Of The Sky.

Can Anything Be More Disgusting Than To Hear People Called 'educated' Making Small Jokes About Eating Ham, And Showing Themselves Empty Of Any Real Knowledge As To The Relation Of Their Own Social And Religious Life To The History Of The People They Think Themselves Witty In Insulting? [...] The Best Thing That Can Be Said Of It Is, That It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Narrowness—in Plain English, The Stupidity Which Is Still The Average Mark Of Our Culture.

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.

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

The Memory Has As Many Moods As The Temper, And Shifts Its Scenery Like A Diorama.

If A Man Goes A Little Too Far Along A New Road, It Is Usually Himself That He Harms More Than Any One Else.

But Most Of Us Are Apt To Settle Within Ourselves That The Man Who Blocks Our Way Is Odious, And Not To Mind Causing Him A Little Of The Disgust Which His Personality Excites In Ourselves.

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.

Leisure Is Gone,--gone Where The Spinning-wheels Are Gone, And The Pack-horses, And The Slow Wagons, And The Peddlers, Who Brought Bargains To The Door On Sunny Afternoons.

Sunny Afternoon

Love Is Such A Simple Thing When We Have Only One-and-twenty Summers And A Sweet Girl Of Seventeen Trembles Under Our Glance, As If She Were A Bud First Opening Her Heart With Wondering Rapture To The Morning. Such Young Unfurrowed Souls Roll To Meet Each Other Like Two Velvet Peaches That Touch Softly And Are At Rest; They Mingle As Easily As Two Brooklets That Ask For Nothing But To Entwine Themselves And Ripple With Ever-interlacing Curves In The Leafiest Hiding-places.

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