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He Was One Of Those Men, And They Are Not The Commonest, Of Whom We Can Know The Best Only By Following Them Away From The Marketplace, The Platform, And The Pulpit, Entering With Them Into Their Own Homes, Hearing The Voice With Which They Speak To The Young And Aged About Their Own Hearthstone, And Witnessing Their Thoughtful Care For The Everyday Wants Of Everyday Companions, Who Take All Their Kindness As A Matter Of Course, And Not As A Subject For Panegyric.

-George Eliot

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He Was One Of

George Eliot

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He Was One Of Those Men, And They Are Not The Commonest, Of Whom We Can Know The Best Only By Following Them Away From The Marketplace, The Platform, And The Pulpit, Entering With Them Into Their Own Homes, Hearing The Voice With Which They Speak To The Young And Aged About Their Own Hearthstone, And Witnessing Their Thoughtful Care For The Everyday Wants Of Everyday Companions, Who Take All Their Kindness As A Matter Of Course, And Not As A Subject For Panegyric.

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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.

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

What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Cant Use It?

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.

But The Effect Of Her Being On Those Around Her Was Incalculably Diffusive: For The Growing Good Of The World Is Partly Dependent On Unhistoric Acts; And That Things Are Not So Ill With You And Me As They Might Have Been, Is Half Owing To The Number Who Lived Faithfully A Hidden Life, And Rest In Unvisited Tombs.

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

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

I Think What We Call The Dullness Of Things Is A Disease In Ourselves. Else How Could Anyone Find An Intense Interest In Life? And Many Do.

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

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.

It Is Never Too Late To Become The Person You Always Thought You Could Be.

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.

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.

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

But That Intimacy Of Mutual Embarrassment, In Which Each Feels That The Other Is Feeling Something, Having Once Existed, Its Effect Is Not To Be Done Away With.

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

Consequences Are Unpitying.

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?

History Repeats Itself.

There Are Various Orders Of Beauty, Causing Men To Make Fools Of Themselves In Various Styles, From The Desperate To The Sheepish; But There Is One Order Of Beauty Which Seems Made To Turn The Heads Not Only Of Men, But Of All Intelligent Mammals, Even Of Women. 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 And To Engage In Conscious Mischief — A Beauty With Which You Can Never Be Angry, But That You Feel Ready To Crush For Inability To Comprehend The State Of Mind Into Which It Throws You.

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.

There's Folks 'ud Hold A Sieve Under The Pump And Expect To Carry Away The Water.

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.

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.

It Is Impossible, To Me At Least, To Be Poetical In Cold Weather.

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 Medical Man Likes To Make Psychological Observations, And Sometimes In The Pursuit Of Such Studies Is Too Easily Tempted Into Momentous Prophecy Which Life And Death Easily Set At Nought.

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.

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

I At Least Have So Much To Do In Unraveling Certain Human Lots, And Seeing How They Were Woven And Interwoven, That All The Light I Can Command Must Be Concentrated On This Particular Web, And Not Dispersed Over That Tempting Range Of Relevancies Called The Universe.

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.

We Are Rather Apt To Consider An Act Wrong Because It Is Unpleasant To Us.

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.

The Human Heart Finds Nowhere Shelter But In Human Kind.

You Are A Good Young Man," She Said. "but I Do Not Like Husbands. I Will Never Have Another.

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

Effective Magic Is Transcendent Nature.

There Is Hardly Any Contact More Depressing To A Young Ardent Creature Than That Of A Mind In Which Years Full Of Knowledge Seem To Have Issued In A Blank Absence Of Interest Or Sympathy.

One Can Say Everything Best Over A Meal.

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

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

There Is No Sorrow I Have Thought More About Than That-to Love What Is Great, And Try To Reach It, And Yet To Fail.

Oh May I Join The Choir Invisible Of Those Immortal Dead Who Live Again In Minds Made Better By Their Presence.

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

Many An Inherited Sorrow That Has Marred A Life Has Been Breathed Into No Human Ear.

What A Different Result One Gets By Changing The Metaphor!

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

Exaggeration Is

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.

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.

... There Is A Lightness About The Feminine Mind--a Touch And Go--music, The Fine Arts, That Kind Of Thing--they Should Study Those Up To A Certain Point, Women Should; But In A Light Way, You Know.

She Hates Everything That Is Not What She Longs For.

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

Our Dead Are Never Dead To Us, Until We Have Forgotten Them.

Is It Not Rather What We Expect In Men, That They Should Have Numerous Strands Of Experience Lying Side By Side And Never Compare Them With Each Other?

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

I Used To Come From The Village With All That Dirt And Coarse Ugliness Like A Pain Within Me, And The Simpering Pictures In The Drawing-room Seemed To Me Like A Wicked Attempt To Find Delight In What Is False, While We Don't Mind How Hard The Truth Is For The Neighbors Outside Our Walls. I Think We Have No Right To Come Forward And Urge Wider Changes For Good, Until We Have Tried To Alter The Evils Which Lie Under Our Own Hands.

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.

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'.

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.

... 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.

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

What Deep And Worthy Love Is So, Whether Of Woman Or Child, Or Art Or Music. Our Caresses, Our Tender Words, Our Still Rapture Under The Influence Of Autumn Sunsets, Or Pillared Vistas, Or Calm Majestic Statues, Or Beethoven Symphonies All Bring With Them The Consciousness That They Are Mere Waves And Ripples In An Unfathomable Ocean Of Love And Beauty; Our Emotion In Its Keenest Moment Passes From Expression Into Silence, Our Love At Its Highest Flood Rushes Beyond Its Object And Loses Itself In The Sense Of Divine Mystery.

The Beginning Of Hardship Is Like The First Taste Of Bitter Food--it Seems For A Moment Unbearable; Yet, If There Is Nothing Else To Satisfy Our Hunger, We Take Another Bite And Find It Possible To Go On.

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.

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

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

He Was At A Starting Point Which Makes Many A Man's Career A Fine Subject For Betting, If There Were Any Gentlemen Given To That Amusement Who Could Appreciate The Complicated Probabilities Of An Arduous Purpose. . . .

A Foreman, If He's Got A Conscience, And Delights In His Work, Will Do His Business As Well As If He Was A Partner. I Wouldn't Give A Penny For A Man As 'ud Drive A Nail In Slack Because He Didn't Get Extra Pay For It.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

What Loneliness Is More Lonely Than Distrust?

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.

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.

The Saints Were Cowards Who Stood By To See Christ Crucified: They Should Have Flung Themselves Upon The Roman Spears, And Died In Vain-- The Grandest Death, To Die In Vain--for Love Greater Than Sways The Forces Of The World!

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

Nothing Is So Good As It Seems Beforehand.

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

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.

... 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.

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

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

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

Scepticismcan Never Be Thoroughly Applied, Else Life Would Come To A Standstill.

Hobbies Are Apt To Run Away With Us, You Know; It Doesn't Do To Be Run Away With. We Must Keep The Reins.

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

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.

The Jews Are Among The Aristocracy Of Every Land; If A Literature Is Called Rich In The Possession Of A Few Classic Tragedies, What Shall We Say To A National Tragedy Lasting For Fifteen Hundred Years, In Which The Poets And The Actors Were Also The Heroes.

If I Got Places, Sir, It Was Because I Made Myself Fit For 'em. If You Want To Slip Into A Round Hole, You Must First Make A Ball Of Yourself; That's Where It Is.

We Cannot Reform Our Forefathers.

It's A Strange Thing To Think Of A Man As Can Lift A Chair With His Teeth, And Walk Fifty Mile On End, Trembling And Turning Hot And Cold At Only A Look From One Woman Out Of All The Rest I' The World. It's A Mystery We Can Give No Account Of.

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.

Falsehood Is So Easy, Truth So Difficult. Even With No Motive To Be False, It Is Very Hard To Say The Exact Truth.

The Purifying Influence Of Public Confession Springs From The Fact, That By It The Hope In Lies Is Forever Swept Away, And The Soul Recovers The Noble Attitude Of Simplicity.

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.

Time, Like Money, Is Measured By Our Needs.

Worldly Faces Never Look So Worldly As At A Funeral.

We Could Never Have Loved The Earth So Well If We Had Had No Childhood In It.

Our Words Have Wings, But Fly Not Where We Would.

Awful Night! Ancestral Mystery Of Mysteries.

We Are All Of Us Born In Moral Stupidity, Taking The World As An Udder To Feed Our Supreme Selves

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

Vanity Is As Ill At Ease Under Indifference As Tenderness Is Under A Love Which It Cannot Return.

There Are But Two Sorts Of Government: One Where Men Show Their Teeth At Each Other, And One Where Men Show Their Tongues And Lick The Feet Of The Strongest.

In The Ages Since Adam's Marriage, It Has Been Good For Some Men To Be Alone, And For Some Women Also.

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.

... The Business Of Life Shuts Us Up Within The Environs Of London And Within Sight Of Human Advancement, Which I Should Be So Very Glad To Believe In Without Seeing.

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Haste Makes Waste

A Friend Is One To Whom One May Pour Out The Contents Of One's Heart, Chaff And Grain Together, Knowing That Gentle Hands Will Take And Sift It, Keep What Is Worth Keeping, And With A Breath Of Kindness, Blow The Rest Away.

A Woman's Rank Lies In The Fulness Of Her Womanhood: Therein Alone She Is Royal.

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?

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.

Well, Well, My Boy, If Good Luck Knocks At Your Door, Don't You Put Your Head Out At Window And Tell It To Be Gone About Its Business, That's All.

Given, A Man With Moderate Intellect, A Moral Standard Not Higher Than The Average, Some Rhetorical Affluence And A Great Glibness Of Speech, What Is The Career In Which, Without The Aid Of Birth Or Money, He May Most Easily Attain Power And Reputation In English Society? Where Is That Goshen Of Mediocrity In Which A Smattering Of Science And Learning Will Pass For Profound Instruction, Where Platitudes Will Be Accepted As Wisdom, Bigoted Narrowness As Holy Zeal, Unctuous Egoism As God-given Piety?

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

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us.

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.

Is Not This A True Autumn Day? Just The Still Melancholy That I Love - That Makes Life And Nature Harmonise. The Birds Are Consulting About Their Migrations, The Trees Are Putting On The Hectic Or The Pallid Hues Of Decay, And Begin To Strew The Ground, That One's Very Footsteps May Not Disturb The Repose Of Earth And Air, While They Give Us A Scent That Is A Perfect Anodyne To The Restless Spirit. 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.

Life Was Never Anything But A Perpetual See-saw Between Gravity And Jest.

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

There Is No Human Being Who Having Both Passions And Thoughts Does Not Think In Consequences Of His Passions--does Not Find Images Rising In His Mind Which Soothe The Passion With Hope Or Sting It With Dread.

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

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

How Impossible It Is For Strong Healthy People To Understand The Way In Which Bodily Malaise And Suffering Eats At The Root Of One's Life! The Philosophy That Is True - The Religion That Is Strength To The Healthy - Is Constantly Emptiness To One When The Head Is Distracted And Every Sensation Is Oppressive.

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

A Supreme Love, A Motive That Gives A Sublime Rhythm To A Woman's Life, And Exalts Habit Into Partnership With The Soul's Highest Needs, Is Not To Be Had Where And How She Wills.

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.

The Great River-courses Which Have Shaped The Lives Of Men Have Hardly Changed; And Those Other Streams, The Life-currents That Ebb And Flow In Human Hearts, Pulsate To The Same Great Needs, The Same Great Loves And Terrors. As Our Thought Follows Close In The Slow Wake Of The Dawn, We Are Impressed With The Broad Sameness Of The Human Lot, Which Never Alters In The Main Headings Of Its History--hunger And Labour, Seed-time And Harvest, Love And Death.

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

The Worst Of All Hobbies Are Those That People Think They Can Get Money At. They Shoot Their Money Down Like Corn Out Of A Sack Then.

Speech Is Often Barren; But Silence Also Does Not Necessarily Brood Over A Full Nest. Your Still Fowl, Blinking At You Without Remark, May All The While Be Sitting On One Addled Egg; And When It Takes To Cackling Will Have Nothing To Announce But That Addled Delusion.

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

There Is No Hour That Has Not Its Births Of Gladness And Despair, No Morning Brightness That Does Not Bring New Sickness To Desolation As Well As New Forces To Genius And Love. There Are So Many Of Us, And Our Lots Are So Different, What Wonder That Nature's Mood Is Often In Harsh Contrast With The Great Crisis Of Our Lives?

Animals Are Such Agreeable Friends - They Ask No Questions; They Pass No Criticisms.

But What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Can't Use It?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Our Growing Thought Makes Growing Revelation.

Primary (the Lds Church's Sunday School For Children) Is Where You Go To Do With Somebody Else's Mother The Things You Would Do With Your Own Mother If She Weren't So Busy Teaching Primary.

I Always Think The Flowers Can See Us, And Know What We Are Thinking About.

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.

Susceptible Persons Are More Affected By A Change Of Tone That By Unexpected Words.

Knowledge Slowly Builds Up What Ignorance In An Hour Pulls Down.

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

News Is Often Dispersed As Thoughtlessly And Effectively As That Pollen Which The Bees Carry Off (having No Idea How Powdery They Are) When They Are Buzzing In Search Of Their Particular Nectar.

One Way Of Getting An Idea Of Our Fellow-countrymen's Miseries Is To Go And Look At Their Pleasures.

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 A Man Has Seen The Woman Whom He Would Have Chosen If He Had Intended To Marry Speedily, His Remaining A Bachelor Will Usually Depend On Her Resolution Rather Than On His.

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

A Man Vows, And Yet Will Not East Away The Means Of Breaking His Vow. Is It That He Distinctly Means To Break It? Not At All; But The Desires Which Tend To Break It Are At Work In Him Dimly, And Make Their Way Into His Imagination, And Relax His Muscles In The Very Moments When He Is Telling Himself Over Again The Reasons For His Vow.

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.

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

Bad Literature Of The Sort Called Amusing Is Spiritual Gin.

An Ass May Bray A Good While Before He Shakes The Stars Down.

I Not Only Want To Be Loved, I Want To Be Told That I'm Loved.

Keep True, Never Be Ashamed Of Doing Right.

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.

In Rome It Seems As If There Were So Many Things Which Are More Wanted In The World Than Pictures.

It Is Strange How Deeply Colours Seem To Penetrate One, Like Scent.

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

Things Don't Happen Because They're Bad Or Good, Else All Eggs Would Be Addled Or None At All, And At The Most It Is But Six To The Dozen. There's Good Chances And Bad Chances, And Nobody's Luck Is Pulled Only By One String.

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.

Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

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

Sane People Did What Their Neighbors Did, So That If Any Lunatics Were At Large, One Might Know And Avoid Them.

If I Have Read Religious History Aright, Faith, Hope, And Charity Have Not Always Been Found In A Direct Ratio With A Sensibility To The Three Concords; And It Is Possible, Thank Heaven! To Have Very Erroneous Theories And Very Sublime Feelings.

Ignorance Is Not So Damnable As Humbug, But When It Prescribes Pills It May Happen To Do More Harm.

Life Is Like Our Game At Whist ... I Don't Enjoy The Game Much, But I Like To Play My Cards Well, And See What Will Be The End Of It.

I Like Trying To Get Pregnant. I'm Not So Sure About Childbirth.

My Own Experience And Development Deepen Every Day My Conviction That Our Moral Progress May Be Measured By The Degree In Which We Sympathize With Individual Suffering And Individual Joy.

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.

Falsehood Is Easy, Truth So Difficult.

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.

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.

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

But I Think It Is Hardly An Argument Against A Man's General Strength Of Character, That He Should Be Apt To Be Mastered By Love. A Fine Constitution Doesn't Insure One Against Small-pox Or Any Other Of Those Inevitable Diseases. A Man May Be Very Firm In Other Matters, And Yet Be Under A Sort Of Witchery From A Woman.

For What Is Love Itself, For The One We Love Best? An Enfolding Of Immeasurable Cares Which Yet Are Better Than Any Joys Outside Our Love.

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.

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.

For What We Call Illusions Are Often, In Truth, A Wider Vision Of Past And Present Realities - A Willing Movement Of A Man's Soul With The Larger Sweep Of The World's Forces - A Movement Towards A More Assured End Than The Chances Of A Single Life.

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

The Intensest Form Of Hatred Is That Rooted In Fear.

We Must Find Our Duties In What Comes To Us, Not In What Might Have Been.

Only In The Agony Of Parting Do We Look Into The Depths Of Love.

Folks As Have No Mind To Be O' Use Have Allays The Luck To Be Out O' The Road When There's Anything To Be Done.

Whatever Be Thy Fate Today, Remember, This Will Pass Away!

A Suppressed Resolve Will Betray Itself In The Eyes.

It Is Never Too Late To Be Who You Want To Be.

Man May Content Himself With The Applause Of The World And The Homage Paid To His Intellect, But Woman's Heart Has Holier Idols.

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.

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

Here Undoubtedly Lies The Chief Poetic Energy: - In The Force Of Imagination That Pierces Or Exalts The Solid Fact, Instead Of Floating Among Cloud-pictures.

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Danica McKellar

Joyce Carol Oates

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