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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.

-George Eliot

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Explain! Tell A Man

George Eliot

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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.

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What A Different Result One Gets By Changing The Metaphor!

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.

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.

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

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

There Is Nothing That Will Kill A Man So Soon As Having Nobody To Find Fault With But Himself.

I Have No Courage To Write Much Unless I Am Written To. I Soon Begin To Think That There Are Plenty Of Other Correspondents More Interesting - So If You All Want To Hear From Me You Know The Conditions.

People Who Can't Be Witty Exert Themselves To Be Devout And Affectionate.

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.

Memory, When Duly Impregnated With Ascertained Facts, Is Sometimes Surprisingly Fertile.

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

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.

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

Strange, That Some Of Us, With Quick Alternate Vision, See Beyond Our Infatuations, And Even While We Rave On The Heights, Behold The Wide Plain Where Our Persistent Self Pauses And Awaits Us.

It Is A Fact Capable Of Amiable Interpretation That Ladies Are Not The Worst Disposed Towards A New Acquaintance Of Their Own Sex, Because She Has Points Of Inferiority.

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.

These Fellow-mortals, Every One, Must Be Accepted As They Are: You Can Neither Straighten Their Noses, Nor Brighten Their Wit, Nor Rectify Their Dispositions; And It Is These People-amongst Whom Your Life Is Passed-that It Is Needful You Should Tolerate, Pity, And Love: It Is These More Or Less Ugly, Stupid, Inconsistent People Whose Movements Of Goodness You Should Be Able To Admire-for Whom You Should Cherish All Possible Hopes, All Possible Patience.

Letter-writing I Imagine Is Counted As 'work' From Which You Must Abstain, And I Scribble This Letter Simply From The Self-satisfied Notion That You Will Like To Hear From Me. You See, I Have Asked No Questions, Which Are The Torture-screws Of Correspondence. Hence You Have Nothing To Answer.

Adventure Is Not Outside Man; It Is Within.

Blows Are Sarcasms Turned Stupid.

We Are Contented With Our Day When We Have Been Able To Bear Our Grief In Silence, And Act As If We Were Not Suffering.

Failure After Long Perseverance Is Much Grander Than Never To Have A Striving Good Enough To Be Called A Failure.

Even Success Needs Its Consolations.

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.

But What We Call Our Despair Is Often Only The Painful Eagerness Of Unfed Hope.

I Shall Be So Glad If You Will Tell Me What To Read. I Have Been Looking Into All The Books In The Library At Offendene, But There Is Nothing Readable. The Leaves All Stick Together And Smell Musty. I Wish I Could Write Books To Amuse Myself, As You Can! How Delightful It Must Be To Write Books After One's Own Taste Instead Of Reading Other People's! Home-made Books Must Be So Nice.

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us Which Would Have To Be Taken Into Account In An Explanation Of Our Gusts And Storms.

We All Remember Epochs In Our Experience When Some Dear Expectation Dies, Or Some New Motive Is Born.

The Intensest Form Of Hatred Is That Rooted In Fear.

That's What A Man Wants In A Wife, Mostly; He Wants To Make Sure One Fool Tells Him He's Wise.

Anger And Jealousy Can No More Bear To Lose Sight Of Their Objects Than Love.

I Desire No Future That Will Break The Ties Of The Past.

I Like Not Only To Be Loved, But To Be Told That I Am Loved; The Realm Of Silence Is Large Enough Beyond The Grave.

You Know I Have Duties──we Both Have Duties──before Which Feeling Must Be Sacrificed.

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.

Some Gentlemen Have Made An Amazing Figure In Literature By General Discontent With The Universe As A Trap Of Dulness Into Which Their Great Souls Have Fallen By Mistake; But The Sense Of A Stupendous Self And An Insignificant World May Have Its Consolations. Lydgate's Discontent Was Much Harder To Bear; It Was The Sense That There Was A Grand Existence In Thought And Effective Action Lying Around Him, While His Self Was Being Narrowed Into The Miserable Isolation Of Egoistic Fears, And Vulgar Anxieties For Events That Might Allay Such Fears.

God, Immortality, Duty - How Inconceivable The First, How Unbelievable The Second, How Peremptory And Absolute The Third.

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

How Will You Find Good? It Is Not A Thing Of Choice; It Is A River That Flows From The Foot Of The Invisible Throne And Flows By The Path Of Obedience.

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.

Teach Love, For That Is What You Are.

It Is Always Your Heaviest Bore Who Is Astonished At The Tameness Of Modern Celebrities: Naturally; For A Little Of His Company Has Reduced Them To A State Of Flaccid Fatigue.

Few Things Hold The Perception More Thoroughly Captive Than Anxiety About What We Have Got To Say

If You Are To Rule Men, You Must Rule Them Through Their Own Ideas.

A Fool Or Idiot Is One Who Expects Things To Happen That Never Can Happen.

Most Of Us Who Turn To Any Subject We Love Remember Some Morning Or Evening Hour When We Got On A High Stool To Reach Down An Untried Volume, Or Sat With Parted Lips Listening To A New Talker, Or For Very Lack Of Books Began To Listen To The Voices Within, As The First Traceable Beginning Of Our Love.

I Can't Bear Fishing. I Think People Look Like Fools Sitting Watching A Line Hour After Hour-or Else Throwing And Throwing, And Catching Nothing.

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.

I Trust You As Holy Men Trust God; You Could Do Nought That Was Not Pure And Loving, Though The Deed Might Pierce Me Unto Death.

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.

In The First Moments When We Come Away From The Presence Of Death, Every Other Relation To The Living Is Merged, To Our Feeling, In The Great Relation Of A Common Nature And A Common Destiny.

I've Always Felt That Your Belongings Have Never Been On A Level With You.

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.

... We All Know The Wag's Definition Of A Philanthropist: A Man Whose Charity Increases Directly As The Square Of The Distance.

Where You Have Friends You Should Not Go To Inns.

Decide On What You Think Is Right, And Stick To It.

There Are Answers Which, In Turning Away Wrath, Only Send It To The Other End Of The Room, And To Have A Discussion Coolly Waived When You Feel That Justice Is All On Your Own Side Is Even More Exasperating In Marriage Than In Philosophy.

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.

Who Can Prove Wit To Be Witty When With Deeper Ground Dulness Intuitive Declares Wit Dull?

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

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

It's All One Web, Sir. The Prosperity Of The Country Is One Web.

It Is A Narrow Mind Which Cannot Look At A Subject From Various Points Of View.

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.

There Are New Eras In One's Life That Are Equivalent To Youth-are Something Better Than Youth.

Something Better

Truth Has Rough Flavours If We Bite It Through.

What Mortal Is There Of Us, Who Would Find His Satisfaction Enhanced By An Opportunity Of Comparing The Picture He Presents To Himself Of His Doings, With The Picture They Make On The Mental Retina Of His Neighbours? We Are Poor Plants Buoyed Up By The Air-vessels Of Our Own Conceit.

... 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.

The Intense Happiness Of Our Union Is Derived In A High Degree From The Perfect Freedom With Which We Each Follow And Declare Our Own Impressions.

The Perpetual Mourner -- The Grief That Can Never Be Healed -- Is Innocently Enough Felt To Be Wearisome By The Rest Of The World. And My Sense Of Desolation Increases. Each Day Seems A New Beginning -- A New Acquaintance With Grief.

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

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.

There Is No Short-cut No Patent Tram-road, To Wisdom. After All The Centuries Of Invention, The Soul's Path Lies Through The Thorny Wilderness Which Must Still Be Trodden In Solitude, With Bleeding Feet, With Sobs For Help, As It Was Trodden By Them Of Old Time.

How Oft Review; Each Finding, Like A Friend, Something To Blame, And Something To Commend.

A Woman's Lot Is Made For Her By The Love She Accepts.

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

How Unspeakably The Lengthening Of Memories In Common Endears Our Old Friends!

You Must Love Your Work, And Not Be Always Looking Over The Edge Of It, Wanting Your Play To Begin. And The Other Is, You Must Not Be Ashamed Of Your Work, And Think It Would Be More Honorable To You To Be Doing Something Else. You Must Have A Pride In Your Own Work And In Learning To Do It Well.

What Are A Handful Of Reasonable Men Against A Crowd With Stones In Their Hands?

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

There Is Hardly Any Mental Misery Worse Than That Of Having Our Own Serious Phrases, Our Own Rooted Beliefs, Caricatured By A Charlatan Or A Hireling.

What Novelty Is Worth That Sweet Monotony Where Everything Is Known, And Loved Because It Is Known?

Little Children Are Still The Symbol Of The Eternal Marriage Between Love And Duty.

Men And Women Make Sad Mistakes About Their Own Symptoms, Taking Their Vague Uneasy Longings, Sometimes For Genius, Sometimes For Religion, And Oftener Still For A Mighty Love.

There Is No Compensation For The Woman Who Feels That The Chief Relation Of Her Life Has Been No More Than A Mistake. She Has Lost Her Crown. The Deepest Secret Of Human Blessedness Has Half Whispered Itself To Her, And Then Forever Passed Her By.

There's Truth In Wine, And There May Be Some In Gin And Muddy Beer; But Whether It's Truth Worth My Knowing, Is Another Question.

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

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.

I Think Cheerfulness Is A Fortune In Itself.

It Is A Common Enough Case, That Of A Man Being Suddenly Captivated By A Woman Nearly The Opposite Of His Ideal.

A Good Horse Makes Short Miles.

Surely It Is Not True Blessedness To Be Free Of Sorrow While There Is Sorrow And Sin In The World. Sorrow Is A Part Of Love And Love Does Not Seek To Throw It Off.

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.

Try To Take Hold Of Your Sensibility, And Use It As If It Were A Faculty, Like Vision.

The Dull Mind, Once Arriving At An Inference That Flatters The Desire, Is Rarely Able To Retain The Impression That The Notion From Which The Inference Started Was Purely Problematic.

Fairy Folk A-listening Hear The Seed Sprout In The Spring, And For Music To Their Dance Hear The Hedgerows Wake From Trance, Sap That Trembles Into Buds Sending Little Rhythmic Floods Of Fairy Sound In Fairy Ears. Thus All Beauty That Appears Has Birth As Sound To Finer Sense And Lighter-clad Intelligence.

Fear Was Stronger Than The Calculation Of Probabilities.

Mankind Is Not Disposed To Look Narrowly Into The Conduct Of Great Victors When Their Victory Is On The Right Side.

Poor Fellow! I Think He Is In Love With You.' I Am Not Aware Of It. And To Me It Is One Of The Most Odious Things In A Girl's Life, That There Must Always Be Some Supposition Of Falling In Love Coming Between Her And Any Man Who Is Kind To Her... I Have No Ground For The Nonsensical Vanity Of Fancying Everybody Who Comes Near Me Is In Love With Me.

Falling In Love

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

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.

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?

'tis God Gives Skill, But Not Without Men's Hand: He Could Not Make Antonio Stradivarius's Violins Without Antonio.

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.

Bad Literature Of The Sort Called Amusing Is Spiritual Gin.

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

Poetry And Art And Knowledge Are Sacred And Pure.

It Is Better - It Shall Be Better With Me Because I Have Known You.

Man Cannot Choose His Duties.

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.

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.

It Is A Common Sentence That Knowledge Is Power; But Who Hath Duly Considered Or Set Forth The Power Of Ignorance? Knowledge Slowly Builds Up What Ignorance In An Hour Pulls Down.

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

There Are Characters Which Are Continually Creating Collisions And Nodes For Themselves In Dramas Which Nobody Is Prepared To Act With Them. Their Susceptibilities Will Clash Against Objects That Remain Innocently Quiet.

What Moments Of Despair That Life Would Ever Be Made Precious To Me By The Consciousness That I Lived To Some Good Purpose! It Was That Sort Of Despair That Sucked Away The Sap Of Half The Hours Which Might Have Been Filled By Energetic Youthful Activity: And The Same Demon Tries To Get Hold Of Me Again Whenever An Old Work Is Dismissed And A New One Is Being Meditated.

I Couldn't Live In Peace If I Put The Shadow Of A Willful Sin Between Myself And God.

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.

People Are Almost Always Better Than Their Neighbors Think They Are.

If You Had A Table Spread For A Feast, And Was Making Merry With Your Friends, You Would Think It Was Kind To Let Me Come And Sit Down And Rejoice With You, Because You'd Think I Should To Share Those Good Things; But I Should Better To Share In Your Trouble And Your Labour.

The World Is Full Of Hopeful Analogies And Handsome, Dubious Eggs, Called Possibilities.

In All Private Quarrels The Duller Nature Is Triumphant By Reason Of Dullness.

Grant Folly's Prayers That Hinder Folly's Wish, And Serve The Ends Of Wisdom.

The Rich Ate And Drank Freely, Accepting Gout And Apoplexy As Things That Ran Mysteriously In Respectable Families.

I Love Not To Be Choked With Other Men's Thoughts.

I Have Always Been Thinking Of The Different Ways In Which Christianity Is Taught, And Whenever I Find One Way That Makes It A Wider Blessing Than Any Other, I Cling To That As The Truest--i Mean That Which Takes In The Most Good Of All Kinds, And Brings In The Most People As Sharers In It. It Is Surely Better To Pardon Too Much, Than To Condemn Too Much.

Conscientious People Are Apt To See Their Duty In That Which Is The Most Painful Course.

The Finest Language Is Mostly Made Up Of Simple Unimposing Words.

The Prevarication And White Lies Which A Mind That Keeps Itself Ambitiously Pure Is As Uneasy Under As A Great Artist Under The False Touches That No Eye Detects But His Own, Are Worn As Lightly As Mere Trimmings When Once The Actions Have Become A Lie.

There Are Various Orders Of Beauty, Causing Men To Make Fools Of Themselves In Various Styles.

All Our Ignorance Brings Us Closer To Death.

How Is It That The Poets Have Said So Many Fine Things About Our First Love, So Few About Our Later Love? Are Their First Poems Their Best? Or Are Not Those The Best Which Come From Their Fuller Thought, Their Larger Experience, Their Deeper-rooted Affections? The Boy's Flute-like Voice Has Its Own Spring Charm; But The Man Should Yield A Richer, Deeper Music.

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.

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

In Poor Rosamond's Mind There Was Not Room Enough For Luxuries To Look Small In.

I Had Some Ambition. I Meant Everything To Be Different With Me. I Thought I Had More Strength And Mastery. But The Most Terrible Obstacles Are Such As Nobody Can See Except Oneself.

The Beginning Of An Acquaintance Whether With Persons Or Things Is To Get A Definite Outline Of Our Ignorance.

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.

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

Fine Old Christmas, With The Snowy Hair And Ruddy Face, Had Done His Duty That Year In The Noblest Fashion, And Had Set Off His Rich Gifts Of Warmth And Color With All The Heightening Contrast Of Frost And Snow.

We Are Not Apt To Fear For The Fearless, When We Are Companions In Their Danger.

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

The Strongest Principle Of Growth Lies In The Human Choice.

She Was No Longer Struggling Against The Perception Of Facts, But Adjusting Herself To Their Clearest Perception.

It Is Difficult For Woman To Try To Be Anything Good When She Is Not Believed In.

'character," Says Novalis, In One Of His Questionable Aphorisms - Character Is Destiny'.

Science Is Properly More Scrupulous Than Dogma. Dogma Gives A Charter To Mistake, But The Very Breath Of Science Is A Contest With Mistake, And Must Keep The Conscience Alive.

The First Condition Of Human Goodness Is Something To Love; The Second, Something To Reverence.

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

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.

Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

Many An Irritating Fault, Many An Unlovely Oddity, Has Come Of A Hard Sorrow.

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

Don't You Meddle With Me, And I Won't Meddle With You.

Those Who Trust Us Educate Us.

Blameless People Are Always The Most Exasperating.

We Have Had An Unspeakably Delightful Journey, One Of Those Journeys Which Seem To Divide One's Life In Two, By The New Ideas They Suggest And The New Views Of Interest They Open.

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.

A Woman's Hopes Are Woven Of Sunbeams; A Shadow Annihilates Them.

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.

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.

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.

Two Angels Guide The Path Of Man, Both Aged And Yet Young. As Angels Are, Ripening Through Endless Years, On One He Leans: Some Call Her Memory, And Some Tradition; And Her Voice Is Sweet, With Deep Mysterious Accords: The Other, Floating Above, Holds Down A Lamp With Streams A Light Divine And Searching On The Earth, Compelling Eyes And Footsteps. Memory Yields, Yet Clings With Loving Check, And Shines Anew, Reflecting All The Rays Of That Bright Lamp Our Angel Reason Holds. We Had Not Walked But For Tradition; We Walk Evermore To Higher Paths By Brightening Reason's Lamp.

We Are Led On, Like Little Children, By A Way We Know Not.

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.

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

Every Man's Work, Pursued Steadily, Tends To Become An End In Itself, And So To Bridge Over The Loveless Chasms Of His Life.

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. . . .

Knowledge Is Power

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

Marriage Must Be A Relation Either Of Sympathy Or Of Conquest.

Among All Forms Of Mistake, Prophecy Is The Most Gratuitous.

Until Every Good Man Is Brave, We Must Expect To Find Many Good Women Timid--too Timid Even To Believe In The Correctness Of Their Own Best Promptings, When These Would Place Them In A Minority.

In The Love Of A Brave And Faithful Man There Is Always A Strain Of Maternal Tenderness; He Gives Out Again Those Beams Of Protecting Fondness Which Were Shed On Him As He Lay On His Mother's Knee.

Worldly Faces Never Look So Worldly As At A Funeral. They Have The Same Effect Of Grating Incongruity As The Sound Of A Coarse Voice Breaking The Solemn Silence Of Night.

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.

Often The Soul Is Ripened Into Fuller Goodness While Age Has Spread An Ugly Film, So That Mere Glances Can Never Divine The Preciousness Of The Fruit.

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.

In The Schoolroom Her Quick Mind Had Taken Readily That Strong Starch Of Unexplained Rules And Disconnected Facts Which Saves Ignorance From Any Painful Sense Of Limpness.

Particular Lies May Speak A General Truth.

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

Rome - The City Of Visible History, Where The Past Of A Whole Hemisphere Seems Moving In Funeral Procession With Strange Ancestral Images And Trophies Gathered From Afar.

A Picture Of Human Life Such As A Great Artist Can Give, Surprises Even The Trivial And The Selfish Into That Attention To What Is Apart From Themselves, Which May Be Called The Raw Material Of Moral Sentiment.

It Was One Of Those Dangerous Moments When Speech Is At Once Sincere And Deceptive - When Feeling, Rising High Above Its Average Depth, Leaves Flood-marks Which Are Never Reached Again.

Among All The Many Kinds Of First Love, That Which Begins In Childish Companionship Is The Strongest And Most Enduring: When Passion Comes To Unite Its Force To Long Affection, Love Is At Its Spring-tide.

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.

After All, People May Really Have In Them Some Vocation Which Is Not Quite Plain To Themselves, May They Not? They May Seem Idle And Weak Because They Are Growing. We Should Be Very Patient With Each Other, I Think.

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

But She Took Her Husband's Jokes And Joviality As Patiently As Everything Else, Considering That "men Would Be So", And Viewing The Stronger Sex In The Light Of Animals Whom It Had Pleased Heaven To Make Naturally Troublesome, Like Bulls And Turkey-cocks.

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.

Our Dead Are Never Dead To Us Until We Have Forgotten Them: They Can Be Injured By Us, They Can Be Wounded; They Know All Our Penitence, All Our Aching Sense That Their Place Is Empty, All The Kisses We Bestow On The Smallest Relic Of Their Presence.

Women Know No Perfect Love: Loving The Strong, They Can Forsake The Strong; Man Clings Because The Being Whom He Loves Is Weak And Needs Him.

All Who Remember Their Childhood Remember The Strange Vague Sense, When Some New Experience Came, That Everything Else Was Going To Be Changed, And That There Would Be No Lapse Into The Old Monotony.

New Experiences

Wine And The Sun Will Make Vinegar Without Any Shouting To Help Them.

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.

The Mysterious Complexity Of Our Life Is Not To Be Embraced By Maxims ... To Lace Ourselves Up In Formulas Of That Sort Is To Repress All The Divine Promptings And Inspirations That Spring From Growing Insight And Sympathy.

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!

There Are Answers Which, In Turning Away Wrath, Only Send It To The Other End Of The Room.

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

History Repeats Itself.

I Flutter All Ways, And Fly In None.

I'm Not One Of Those That Can See The Cat In The Dairy And Wonder What She's There For.

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Shannen Doherty

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