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

-George Eliot

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I Have The Conviction

George Eliot

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

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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.

The Law And Medicine Should Be Very Serious Professions To Undertake, Should They Not? People's Lives And Fortunes Depend On Them.

The Mind That Is Too Ready At Contempt And Reprobation Is, I May Say, As A Clenched Fist That Can Give Blows, But Is Shut Up From Receiving And Holding Ought That Is Precious.

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

When You See Fair Hair Be Pitiful.

The Wrong That Rouses Our Angry Passions Finds Only A Medium In Us; It Passes Through Us Like A Vibration, And We Inflict What We Have Suffered.

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.

It Is Surely Better To Pardon Too Much, Than To Condemn Too Much.

Our Consciousness Rarely Registers The Beginning Of A Growth Within Us Any More Than Without Us; There Have Been Many Circulation Of The Sap Before We Detect The Smallest Sign Of The Bud.

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 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.

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.

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.

I Don't Remember Ever Being See-saw, When I'd Made My Mind Up That A Thing Was Wrong. It Takes The Taste Out O' My Mouth For Things, When I Know I Should Have A Heavy Conscience After 'em. I've Seen Pretty Clear, Ever Since I Could Cast Up A Sum, As You Can Never Do What's Wrong Without Breeding Sin And Trouble More Than You Can Ever See. It's Like A Bit O' Bad Workmanship--you Never See Th' End O' The Mischief It'll Do. And It's A Poor Look-out To Come Into The World To Make Your Fellow Creatures Worse Off Instead O' Better.

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

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

Fancy What A Game Of Chess Would Be If All The Chessmen Had Passions And Intellects, More Or Less Small And Cunning; If You Were Not Only Uncertain About Your Adversary's Men, But A Little Uncertain Also About Your Own. You Would Be Especially Likely To Be Beaten, If You Depended Arrogantly On Your Mathematical Imagination, And Regarded Your Passionate Pieces With Contempt. Yet This Imaginary Chess Is Easy Compared With A Game A Man Has To Play Against His Fellow-men With Other Fellow-men For Instruments.

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.

Boots And Shoes Are The Greatest Trouble Of My Life.

Your Trouble's Easy Borne When Everybody Gives It A Lift For You.

People Are So Ridiculous With Their Illusions, Carrying Their Fool's Caps Unawares, Thinking Their Own Lies Opaque While Everybody Else's Are Transparent, Making Themselves Exceptions To Everything, As If When All The World Looked Yellow Under A Lamp They Alone Are Rosy.

Who Has Not Felt The Beauty Of A Woman's Arm? The Unspeakable Suggestions Of Tenderness That Lie In The Dimpled Elbow, And All The Varied Gently-lessening Curves, Down To The Delicate Wrist, With Its Tiniest, Almost Imperceptible Nicks In The Firm Softness.

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

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

It Is In These Acts Called Trivialities That The Seeds Of Joy Are Forever Wasted, Until Men And Women Look Round With Haggard Faces At The Devastation Their Own Waste Has Made, And Say, The Earth Bears No Harvest Of Sweetness - Calling Their Denial Knowledge.

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.

There Is A Sort Of Jealousy Which Needs Very Little Fire; It Is Hardly A Passion, But A Blight Bred In The Cloudy, Damp Despondency Of Uneasy Egoism.

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.

The Important Work Of Moving The World Forward Does Not Wait To Be Done By Perfect Men.

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

Blows Are Sarcasms Turned Stupid.

Kisses Honeyed By Oblivion.

Go Forward With Joyful Confidence.

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

As To Memory, It Is Known That This Frail Faculty Naturally Lets Drop The Facts Which Are Less Flattering To Our Self-love - When It Does Not Retain Them Carefully As Subjects Not To Be Approached, Marshy Spots With A Warning Flag Over Them.

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

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.

Eros Has Degenerated; He Began By Introducing Order And Harmony, And Now He Brings Back Chaos.

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.

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

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 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.

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

Exaggeration Is

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

I Don't Mind How Many Letters I Receive From One Who Interests Me As Much As You Do. The Receptive Part Of Correspondence I Can Carry On With Much Alacrity. It Is Writing Answers That I Groan Over.

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

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.

People Who Live At A Distance Are Naturally Less Faulty Than Those Immediately Under Our Own Eyes.

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

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

One Couldn't Carry On Life Comfortably Without A Little Blindness To The Fact That Everything Has Been Said Better Than We Can Put It Ourselves.

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

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

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.

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

Melodies Die Out, Like The Pipe Of Pan, With The Ears That Love Them And Listen For Them.

Hostesses Who Entertain Much Must Make Up Their Parties As Ministers Make Up Their Cabinets, On Grounds Other Than Personal Liking.

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

I Shall Do Everything It Becomes Me To Do.

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

You Must Learn To Deal With The Odd And Even In Life, As Well As In Figures.

Receptiveness Is A Rare And Massive Power, Like Fortitude.

... 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.

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

All Passion Becomes Strength When It Has An Outlet.

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

If Art Does Not Enlarge Men's Sympathies, It Does Nothing Morally.

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

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

What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Can't Use It? An Unfecundated Egg, Which The Waves Of Time Wash Away Into Nonentity.

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

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.

Lord! Thou Art With Thy People Still; They See Thee In The Night-watches, And Their Hearts Burn Within Them As Thou Talkest With Them By The Way. And Thou Art Near To Those That Have Not Known Thee; Open Their Eyes That They May See Thee--see Thee Weeping Over Them, And Saying, "ye Will Not Come Unto Me That Ye Might Have Life"--see Thee Hanging On The Cross And Saying, "father, Forgive Them, For They Know Not What They Do"--see Thee As Thou Wilt Come Again In Thy Glory To Judge Them At The Last. Amen.

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.

Mysterious Haunts Of Echoes Old And Far, The Voice Divine Of Human Loyalty.

Cruelty, Like Every Other Vice, Requires No Motive Outside Of Itself; It Only Requires Opportunity.

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.

Brothers Are So Unpleasant.

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

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.

Under Every Guilty Secret There Is Hidden A Brood Of Guilty Wishes, Whose Unwholesome Infecting Life Is Cherished By The Darkness.

In The Multitude Of Middle-aged Men Who Go About Their Vocations In A Daily Course Determined For Them Much In The Same Way As The Tie Of Their Cravats, There Is Always A Good Number Who Once Meant To Shape Their Own Deeds And Alter The World A Little.

Poetry And Art And Knowledge Are Sacred And Pure.

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

Jews Are Not Fit For Heaven, But On Earth They Are Most Useful.

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

Trouble Comes To Us All In This Life: We Set Our Hearts On Things Which It Isn't God's Will For Us To Have, And Then We Go Sorrowing.

The Golden Moments In The Stream Of Life Rush Past Us, And We See Nothing But Sand; The Angels Come To Visit Us, And We Only Know Them When They Are Gone.

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.

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

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.

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!

Life Is Measured By The Rapidity Of Change, The Succession Of Influences That Modify The Being.

Subtle Impressions For Which Words Are Quite Too Coarse A Medium.

Death Is The Only Physician, The Shadow Of His Valley The Only Journeying That Will Cure Us Of Age And The Gathering Fatigue Of Years.

Genius Is The Capacity For Receiving And Improving By Discipline.

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

No Man Can Be Wise On An Empty Stomach.

There Is No General Doctrine Which Is Not Capable Of Eating Out Our Morality If Unchecked By The Deep-seated Habit Of Direct Fellow-feeling With Individual Fellow-men.

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

A Bachelor's Children Are Always Young: They're Immortal Children - Always Lisping, Waddling, Helpless, And With A Chance Of Turning Out Good.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Magnifying Glass

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Oh, The Comfort, The Inexpressible Comfort Of Feeling Safe With A Person; Having Neither To Weigh Thoughts Nor Measure Words, But To Pour Them All Out, Just As They Are, Chaff And Grain Together, Knowing That A Faithful Hand Will Take And Sift Them, Keep What Is Worth Keeping, And Then, With A Breath Of Kindness, Blow The Rest Away.

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?

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

It Is Not True That A Man's Intellectual Power Is, Like The Strength Of A Timber Beam, To Be Measured By Its Weakest Point.

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.

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.

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

Hurt, He'll Never Be Hurt--he's Made To Hurt Other People.

Would Not Love See Returning Penitence Afar Off, And Fall On Its Neck And Kiss It?

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

It Is Easy To Say How We Love New Friends, And What We Think Of Them, But Words Can Never Trace Out All The Fibers That Knit Us To The Old.

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.

Women Should Be Protected From Anyone's Exercise Of Unrighteous Power... But Then, So Should Every Other Living Creature.

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.

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

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.

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

If We Had A Keen Vision And Feeling Of All Ordinary Human Life, It Would Be Like Hearing The Grass Grow And The Squirrel's Heart Beat, And We Should Die Of That Roar Which Lies On The Other Side Of Silence.

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.

I Like To Read About Moses Best, In Th' Old Testament. He Carried A Hard Business Well Through, And Died When Other Folks Were Going To Reap The Fruits; A Man Must Have Courage To Look After His Life So, And Think What'll Come F It After He's Dead And Gone.

Power Of Generalizing Gives Men So Much The Superiority In Mistake Over The Dumb Animals.

Breed Is Stronger Than Pasture.

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.

The Best Fire Doesna Flare Up The Soonest.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Possible To Have A Strong Self-love Without Any Self-satisfaction, Rather With A Self-discontent Which Is The More Intense Because One's Own Little Core Of Egoistic Sensibility Is A Supreme Care.

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

Having Once Embarked On Your Marital Voyage, It Is Impossible Not To Be Aware That You Make No Way And The Sea Is Not Within Sight; That In Fact, You Are Exploring An Enclosed Basin.

... 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Tale Of The Divine Pity Was Never Yet Believed From Lips That Were Not Felt To Be Moved By Human Pity.

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.

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.

Love At Its Highest Flood Rushes Beyond Its Object, And Loses Itself In The Sense Of Divine Mystery.

You Should Read History And Look At Ostracism, Persecution, Martyrdom, And That Kind Of Thing. They Always Happen To The Best Men, You Know.

Dear Friends All, A Thousand Christmas Pleasures And Blessings To You -- Good Resolutions And Bright Hopes For The New Year! Amen. People Who Can't Be Witty Exert Themselves To Be Pious Or Affectionate.

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 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.

There Are Two Ways Of Speaking An Audience Will Always Like: One Is, To Tell Them What They Don't Understand; And The Other Is, To Tell Them What They're Used To.

Love Supreme Defies All Sophistry.

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.

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

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

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

Consequences Are Unpitying.

Alas! The Scientific Conscience Had Got Into The Debasing Company Of Money Obligation And Selfish Respects.

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.

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.

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

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.

Man Finds His Pathways: At First They Were Foot-tracks, As Those Of The Beast In The Wilderness; Now They Are Swift And Invisible: His Thought Dives Through The Ocean, And His Wishes Thread The Air: Has He Found All The Pathways Yet? What Reaches Him, Stays With Him, Rules Him: He Must Accept It, Not Knowing Its Pathway.

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

Sunny Afternoon

That Is The Bitterest Of All,--to Wear The Yoke Of Our Own Wrong-doing.

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

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

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

It Is Well Known To All Experienced Minds That Our Firmest Convictions Are Often Dependent On Subtle Impressions For Which Words Are Quite Too Coarse A Medium.

I Have The Conviction That Excessive Literary Production Is A Social Offence.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

With A Single Drop Of Ink For A Mirror, The Egyptian Sorcerer Undertakes To Reveal To Any Chance Comer Far-reaching Visions Of The Past. This Is What I Undertake To Do For You, Reader.

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.

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

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.

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

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

All Writing Seems To Me Worse In The State Of Proof Than In Any Other Form. In Manuscript One's Own Wisdom Is Rather Remarkable To One, But In Proof It Has The Effect Of One's Private Furniture Repeated In The Shop Windows. And Then There Is The Sense That The Worst Errors Will Go To Press Unnoticed!

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.

Effective Magic Is Transcendent Nature.

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

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

To Superficial Observers His Chin Had Too Vanishing An Aspect, Looking As If It Were Being Gradually Reabsorbed. And It Did Indeed Cause Him Some Difficulty About The Fit Of His Satin Stocks, For Which Chins Were At That Time Useful.

It Is Good To Be Helpful And Kindly, But Don't Give Yourself To Be Melted Into Candle Grease For The Benefit Of The Tallow Trade.

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

Trouble's Made Us Kin.

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