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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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... Learning To Love Any One Is Like An Increase Of Property, -- It Increases Care, And Brings Many New Fears Lest Precious Things Should Come To Harm.

Precious Things

I Suppose It Was That In Courtship Everything Is Regarded As Provisional And Preliminary, And The Smallest Sample Of Virtue Or Accomplishment Is Taken To Guarantee Delightful Stores Which The Broad Leisure Of Marriage Will Reveal. But The Door-sill Of Marriage Once Crossed, Expectation Is Concentrated On The Present. Having Once Embarked On Your Marital Voyage, It Is Impossible Not To Be Aware That You Make No Way And That The Sea Is Not Within Sight-that, In Fact, You Are Exploring An Enclosed Basin.

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.

I Care Only To Know, If Possible, The Lasting Meaning That Lies In All Religious Doctrine From The Beginning Till Now.

No One Who Has Ever Known What It Is To Lose Faith In A Fellow-man Whom He Has Profoundly Loved And Reverenced, Will Lightly Say That The Shock Can Leave The Faith In The Invisible Goodness Unshaken. With The Sinking Of High Human Trust, The Dignity Of Life Sinks Too; We Cease To Believe In Our Own Better Self, Since That Also Is Part Of The Common Nature Which Is Degraded In Our Thought; And All The Finer Impulses Of The Soul Are Dulled.

It Is A Wonderful Subduer-this Need Of Love, This Hunger Of The Heart.

What Furniture Can Give Such Finish To A Room As A Tender Woman's Face? And Is There Any Harmony Of Tints That Has Such Stirring Of Delight As The Sweet Modulation Of Her Voice?

Husbands Are An Inferior Class Of Men, Who Require Keeping In Order.

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

Family Likeness Has Often A Deep Sadness In It.

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.

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.

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

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.

A Child, More Than All Other Gifts That Earth Can Offer To Declining Man, Brings Hope With It, And Forward-looking Thoughts." —wordsworth.

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Man Who Is Not A Monster, A Mathematician, Or A Mad Philosopher, Is The Slave Of Some Woman Or Other.

Of New Acquaintances One Can Never Be Sure Because One Likes Them One Day That It Will Be So The Next. Of Old Friends One Is Sure That It Will Be The Same Yesterday, Today, And Forever.

Somebody Put A Drop Under A Magnifying-glass And It Was All Semicolons And Parentheses.

Magnifying Glass

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

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.

No Matter Whether Failure Came A Thousand Different Times, For One Brief Moment Of Success, Life Rang Its Golden Chimes.

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

What Business Has An Old Bachelor Like That To Marry?' Said Sir James. 'he Has One Foot In The Grave.' 'he Means To Draw It Out Again, I Suppose.

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.

O The Anguish Of That Thought That We Can Never Atone To Our Dead For The Stinted Affection We Gave Them, For The Light Answers We Returned To Their Plaints Or Their Pleadings, For The Little Reverence We Showed To That Sacred Human Soul That Lived So Close To Us, And Was The Divinest Thing God Had Given Us To Know!

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

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

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

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

Every Woman Is Supposed To Have The Same Set Of Motives, Or Else To Be A Monster.

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

There Is So Much To Read And The Days Are So Short! I Get More Hungry For Knowledge Every Day, And Less Able To Satisfy My Hunger.

For Years After Lydgate Remembered The Impression Produced In Him By This Involuntary Appeal-this Cry From Soul To Soul, Without Other Consciousness Than Their Moving With Kindred Natures In The Same Embroiled Medium, The Same Troublous Fitfully-illuminated Life.

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

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.

But Certain Winds Will Make Men's Temper Bad.

I Carry My Unwritten Poems In Cipher On My Face!

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

... 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.

When A Homemaking Aunt Scolds A Niece For Following Her Evangelistic Passion Instead Of Domestic Pursuits, Her Reply Is Interesting. First, She Clarifies That God's Individual Call On Her Doesn't Condemn Those In More Conventional Roles. Then, She Says She Can No More Ignore The Cry Of The Lost Than Her Aunt Can The Cry Of Her Child.

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.

It Is As Useless To Fight Against The Interpretations Of Ignorance As To Whip The Fog.

The First Sense Of Mutual Love Excludes Other Feelings; It Will Have The Soul All To Itself.

Duty Has A Trick Of Behaving Unexpectedly -- Something Like A Heavy Friend Whom We Have Amiably Asked To Visit Us, And Who Breaks His Leg Within Our Gates.

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

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

The Best Fire Doesna Flare Up The Soonest.

Certainly The Determining Acts Of Her Life Were Not Ideally Beautiful. They Were The Mixed Result Of Young And Novel Impulse Struggling Amidst The Conditions Of An Imperfect Social State, In Which Great Feelings Will Often Take The Aspect Of Error, And Great Faith The Aspect Of Illusion.

O May I Join The Choir Invisible Of Those Immortal Dead Who Live Again In Minds Made Better By Their Presence; Live In Pulses Stirred To Generosity, In Deeds Of Daring Rectitude, In Scorn For Miserable Aims That End With Self, In Thoughts Sublime That Pierce The Night Like Stars, And With Their Mild Persistence Urge Men's Search To Vaster Issues.

Some Folks' Tongues Are Like The Clocks As Run On Strikin', Not To Tell You The Time O' The Day, But Because There's Summat Wrong I' Their Own Inside.

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.

The Mother's Love Is At First An Absorbing Delight, Blunting All Other Sensibilities; It Is An Expansion Of The Animal Existence; It Enlarges The Imagined Range For Self To Move In: But In After Years It Can Only Continue To Be Joy On The Same Terms As Other Long-lived Love--that Is, By Much Suppression Of Self, And Power Of Living In The Experience Of Another.

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.

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

When Death, The Great Reconciler, Has Come, It Is Never Our Tenderness That We Repent Of, But Our Severity.

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.

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

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.

I Wish Always To Be Quoted As George Eliot.

So Much Of Our Early Gladness Vanishes Utterly From Our Memory: We Can Never Recall The Joy With Which We Laid Our Heads On Our Mother's Bosom Or Rode On Our Father's Back In Childhood; Doubtless That Joy Is Wrought Up Into Our Nature, As The Sunlight Of Long-past Mornings Is Wrought Up In The Soft Mellowness Of The Apricot; But It Is Gone Forever From Our Imagination, And We Can Only Believe In The Joy Of Childhood.

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

I Am Not Imposed Upon By Fine Words; I Can See What Actions Mean.

Those Who Have Been Indulged By Fortune And Have Always Thought Of Calamity As What Happens To Others, Feel A Blind Incredulous Rage At The Reversal Of Their Lot, And Half Believe That Their Wild Cries Will Alter The Course Of The Storm.

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

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.

It Is Not Ignoble To Feel That The Fuller Life Which A Sad Experience Has Brought Us Is Worth Our Personal Share Of Pain. The Growth Of Higher Feeling Within Us Is Like The Growth Of Faculty, Bringing With It A Sense Of Added Strength. We Can No More Wish To Return To A Narrower Sympathy Than Painters Or Musicians Can Wish To Return To Their Cruder Manner, Or Philosophers To Their Less Complete Formulas.

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

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

Life Is Too Precious To Be Spent In This Weaving And Unweaving Of False Impressions, And It Is Better To Live Quietly Under Some Degree Of Misrepresentation Than To Attempt To Remove It By The Uncertain Process Of Letter-writing.

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.

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.

My Childhood Was Full Of Deep Sorrows - Colic, Whooping-cough, Dread Of Ghosts, Hell, Satan, And A Deity In The Sky Who Was Angry When I Ate Too Much Plumcake.

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.

I'd Sooner Have One Real Grief On My Mind Than Twenty False. It's Better To Know One's Robbed Than To Think One's Going To Be Murdered.

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

The Happiest Women, Like The Happiest Nations, Have No History.

Delicious Autumn! My Very Soul Is Wedded To It.

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.

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

Self-confidence Is Apt To Address Itself To An Imaginary Dullness In Others; As People Who Are Well Off Speak In A Cajoling Tone To The Poor.

Self Confidence

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

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 Belongs To Every Large Nature, When It Is Not Under The Immediate Power Of Some Strong Unquestioning Emotion, To Suspect Itself, And Doubt The Truth Of Its Own Impressions, Conscious Of Possibilities Beyond Its Own Horizon.

We Must Not Inquire Too Curiously Into Motives. They Are Apt To Become Feeble In The Utterance: The Aroma Is Mixed With The Grosser Air. We Must Keep The Germinating Grain Away From The Light.

Bad Literature Of The Sort Called Amusing Is Spiritual Gin.

We Are All Of Us Imaginative In Some Form Or Other, For Images Are The Brood Of Desire.

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

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.

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

Destiny Stands By Sarcastic With Our Dramatis Personae Folded In Her Hand.

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!

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.

A Patronizing Disposition Always Has Its Meaner Side.

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.

There Is One Order Of Beauty Which Seems Made To Turn Heads. It Is A Beauty Like That Of Kittens, Or Very Small Downy Ducks Making Gentle Rippling Noises With Their Soft Bills, Or Babies Just Beginning To Toddle.

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

I Have A Knack Of Hoping, Which Is As Good As An Estate.

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

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.

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.

Ingenious Philosophers Tell You, Perhaps, That The Great Work Of The Steam-engine Is To Create Leisure For Mankind. Do Not Believe Them; It Only Creates A Vacuum For Eager Thought To Rush In.

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

... It Is Seldom A Medical Man Has True Religious Views--there Is Too Much Pride Of Intellect.

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

Breed Is Stronger Than Pasture.

We Look At The One Little Woman's Face We Love, As We Look At The Face Of Our Mother Earth, And See All Sorts Of Answers To Our Own Yearnings.

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

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

Blessed Is The Influence Of One True, Loving Human Soul On Another.

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

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

We Cannot Reform Our Forefathers.

Inclination Snatches Arguments To Make Indulgence Seem Judicious Choice.

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.

A Woman Mixed Of Such Fine Elements That Were All Virtue And Religion Dead She'd Make Them Newly, Being What She Was.

Effective Magic Is Transcendent Nature.

It Is A Vain Thought To Flee From The Work That God Appoints Us, For The Sake Of Finding A Greater Blessing, Instead Of Seeking It Where Alone It Is To Be Found - In Loving Obedience.

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

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.

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.

Trouble Always Seems Heavier When It Is Only One's Thought And Not One's Bodily Activity That Is Employed About It.

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

The Disappointments Of Life Can Never, Any More Than Its Pleasures, Be Estimated Singly; And The Healthiest And Most Agreeable Of Men Is Exposed To That Coincidence Of Various Vexations, Each Heightening The Effect Of The Other, Which May Produce In Him Something Corresponding To The Spontaneous And Externally Unaccountable Moodiness Of The Morbid And Disagreeable.

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

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

The Yoke A Man Creates For Himself By Wrong-doing Will Breed Hate In The Kindliest Nature.

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.

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

... Indefinite Visions Of Ambition Are Weak Against The Ease Of Doing What Is Habitual Or Beguilingly Agreeable.

Ah! But The Moods Lie In His Nature, My Boy, Just As Much As His Reflections Did, And More. A Man Can Never Do Anything At Variance With His Own Nature. He Carries Within Him The Germ Of His Most Exceptional Action; And If We Wise People Make Eminent Fools Of Ourselves On Any Particular Occasion, We Must Endure The Legitimate Conclusion That We Carry A Few Grains Of Folly To Our Ounce Of Wisdom.

... The Majority Of Us Scarcely See More Distinctly The Faultiness Of Our Own Conduct Than The Faultiness Of Our Own Arguments, Orthe Dulness [sic] Of Our Own Jokes.

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

I Have Nothing To Tell Except Travellers' Stories, Which Are Always Tiresome, Like The Description Of A Play Which Was Very Exciting To Those Who Saw It.

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

We Learn Words By Rote, But Not Their Meaning; That Must Be Paid For With Our Life-blood, And Printed In The Subtle Fibres Of Our Nerves.

In Old Days There Were Angels Who Came And Took Men By The Hand And Led Them Away From The City Of Destruction. We See No White-winged Angels Now. But Yet Men Are Led Away From Threatening Destruction: A Hand Is Put Into Theirs, Which Leads Them Forth Gently Towards A Calm And Bright Land, So That They Look No More Backward; And The Hand May Be A Little Child's.

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.

If Troubles Were Put Up To Market, I'd Sooner Buy Old Than New. It's Something To Have Seen The Worst.

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.

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.

The Devil Tempts Us Not--'tis We Tempt Him, Reckoning His Skill With Opportunity.

Jealousy Is Never Satisfied With Anything Short Of An Omniscience That Would Detect The Subtlest Fold Of The Heart.

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

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

It Is 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.

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 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.

It Is A Very Good Quality In A Man To Have A Trout-stream.

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.

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are.

One Must Be Poor To Know The Luxury Of Giving!

"heaven Help Us," Said The Old Religion; The New One, From Its Very Lack Of That Faith, Will Teach Us All The More To Help One Another.

Life Is So Complicated A Game That The Devices Of Skill Are Liable To Be Defeated At Every Turn By Air-blown Chances, Incalculable As The Descent Of Thistle-down.

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

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

There's Folks 'ud Stand On Their Heads And Then Say The Fault Was I' Their Boots.

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

Even Those Who Call Themselves 'intimate' Know Very Little About Each Other - Hardly Ever Know Just How A Sorrow Is Felt, And Hurt Each Other By Their Very Attempts At Sympathy Or Consolation. We Can Bear No Hand On Our Bruises.

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.

Deeds Are The Pulse Of Time, His Beating Life, And Righteous Or Unrighteous, Being Done, Must Throb In After-throbs Till Time Itself Be Laid In Stillness, And The Universe Quiver And Breathe Upon No Mirror More.

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

Will Not A Tiny Speck Very Close To Our Vision Blot Out The Glory Of The World, And Leave Only A Margin By Which We See The Blot? I Know No Speck So Troublesome As Self.

If You Are Not Proud Of Your Cellar, There Is No Thrill Of Satisfaction In Seeing Your Guest Hold Up His Wineglass To The Light And Look Judicial.

Awful Night! Ancestral Mystery Of Mysteries.

Let Thy Chief Terror Be Of Thine Own Soul: There, 'mid The Throng Of Hurrying Desires That Trample O'er The Dead To Seize Their Spoil, Lurks Vengeance, Footless, Irresistible As Exhaltations Laden With Slow Death, And O'er The Fairest Troop Of Captured Joys Breathes Pallid Pestilence.

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.

Those Who Trust Us Educate Us.

In Certain Crises Direct Expression Of Sympathy Is The Least Possible To Those Who Most Feel Sympathy.

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.

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

After All, The True Seeing Is Within.

Souls Live On In Perpetual Echoes.

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.

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

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.

A Good Solid Bit Of Work Lasts.

Perfect Love Has A Breath Of Poetry Which Can Exalt The Relations Of The Least-instructed Human Beings.

[it Is Easier] To Quell Emotion Than To Incur The Consequences Of Venting It.

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.

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.

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.

Any Coward Can Fight A Battle When He's Sure Of Winning; But Give Me The Man Who Has The Pluck To Fight When He's Sure Of Losing.

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 Scornful Nostril And The High Head Gather Not The Odors That Lie On The Track Of Truth.

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.

That Sort Of Reputation Which Precedes Performance [is] Often The Larger Part Of A Man's Fame.

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

That By Desiring What Is Perfectly Good, Even When We Don't Quite Know What It Is And Cannot Do What We Would, We Are Part Of The Divine Power Against Evil -- Widening The Skirts Of Light And Making The Struggle With Darkness Narrower.

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

Fine Art, Poetry, That Kind Of Thing, Elevates A Nation.

You May Try — But You Can Never Imagine What It Is To Have A Man's Force Of Genius In You, And Yet To Suffer The Slavery Of Being A Girl.

What Can Still That Hunger Of The Heart Which Sickens The Eye For Beauty, And Makes Sweet-scented Ease An Oppression?

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.

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.

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

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