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I Might Mention All The Divine Charms Of A Bright Spring Day, But If You Had Never In Your Life Utterly Forgotten Yourself In Straining Your Eyes After The Mounting Lark, Or In Wandering Through The Still Lanes When The Fresh-opened Blossoms Fill Them With A Sacred Silent Beauty Like That Of Fretted Aisles, Where Would Be The Use Of My Descriptive Catalogue?

-George Eliot

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I Might Mention All

George Eliot

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I Might Mention All The Divine Charms Of A Bright Spring Day, But If You Had Never In Your Life Utterly Forgotten Yourself In Straining Your Eyes After The Mounting Lark, Or In Wandering Through The Still Lanes When The Fresh-opened Blossoms Fill Them With A Sacred Silent Beauty Like That Of Fretted Aisles, Where Would Be The Use Of My Descriptive Catalogue?

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Love Is Frightened At The Intervals Of Insensibility And Callousness That Encroach By Little And Little On The Domain Of Grief, And It Makes Efforts To Recall The Keenness Of The First Anguish.

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.

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

The Dew-bead Gem Of Earth And Sky Begotten.

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.

Teach Love, For That Is What You Are.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Upon My Word, I Think The Truth Is The Hardest Missile One Can Be Pelted With.

The Responsibility Of Tolerance Lies With Those Who Have The Wider Vision.

They Say Fortune Is A Woman And Capricious. But Sometimes She Is A Good Woman, And Gives To Those Who Merit.

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

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.

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.

To Most Mortals There Is A Stupidity Which Is Unendurable And A Stupidity Which Is Altogether Acceptable - Else, Indeed, What Would Become Of Social Bonds?

Man Cannot Choose His Duties.

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.

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.

The Intensest Form Of Hatred Is That Rooted In Fear.

We Are All Humiliated By The Sudden Discovery Of A Fact Which Has Existed Very Comfortably And Perhaps Been Staring At Us In Private While We Have Been Making Up Our World Entirely Without It.

Best Friend, My Well-spring In The Wilderness!

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

Miss Brooke Had That Kind Of Beauty Which Seems To Be Thrown Into Relief By Poor Dress.

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.

I Would Not Creep Along The Coast But Steer Out In Mid-sea, By Guidance Of The Stars.

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

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.

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

No Great Deed Is Done By Falterers Who Ask For Certainty.

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.

Life Is Very Difficult. It Seems Right To Me Sometimes That We Should Follow Our Strongest Feelings; But Then Such Feelings Continually Come Across The Ties That All Our Former Life Has Made For Us,--the Ties That Have Made Others Dependent On Us,--and Would Cut Them In Two.

Conscience Is Harder Than Our Enemies, Knows More, Accuses With More Nicety.

Love Supreme Defies All Sophistry.

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

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

You Must Love Your Work And Not Always Be Looking Over The Edge Of It Wanting Your Play To Begin.

When One Wanted One's Interests Looking After Whatever The Cost, It Was Not So Well For A Lawyer To Be Over Honest, Else He Might Not Be Up To Other People's Tricks.

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.

... 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.

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

... 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.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun. The Perfect Archer Calls The Deer His Own While Yet The Shaft Is Whistling.

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

The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music.

The Best Fire Doesna Flare Up The Soonest.

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

When The Animals Entered The Ark In Pairs, One May Imagine That Allied Species Made Much Private Remark On Each Other, And Were Tempted To Think That So Many Forms Feeding On The Same Store Of Fodder Were Eminently Superfluous, As Tending To Diminish The Rations.

Our Sense Of Duty Must Often Wait For Some Work Which Shall Take The Place Of Dilettanteism [sic] And Make Us Feel That The Quality Of Our Action Is Not A Matter Of Indifference.

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

There's Times When The Crockery Seems Alive, An' Flies Out O' Your Hand Like A Bird. It's Like The Glass, Sometimes, 'ull Crack As It Stands. What Is To Be Broke Will Be Broke.

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

Blameless People Are Always The Most Exasperating.

There's Things To Put Up Wi' In Ivery Place, An' You May Change An' Change An' Not Better Yourself When All's Said An' Done.

Better Yourself

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

Something Better

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.

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

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

Some Discouragement, Some Faintness Of Heart At The New Real Future Which Replaces The Imaginary, Is Not Unusual, And We Do Not Expect People To Be Deeply Moved By What Is Not Unusual. That Element Of Tragedy Which Lies In The Very Fact Of Frequency Has Not Yet Wrought Itself Into The Coarse Emotion Of Mankind, And Perhaps Our Frames Could Hardly Bear Much Of It. 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.

"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.

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.

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

In The Days When The Spinning Wheels Hummed Busily In The Farmhouses--and Even Great Ladies, Clothed In Silk And Thread Lace, Had Their Toy Spinning Wheels Of Polished Oak--there Might Be Seen, In Districts Far Away Among The Lanes, Or Deep In The Bosom Of The Hills, Certain Palled Undersized Men Who, By The Side Of The Brawny Country-folk, Looked Like The Remnants Of A Disinherited Race.

The Bow Always Strung ... Will Not Do.

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.

Animals Are Such Agreeable Friends.

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

The Usual Attitude Of Christians Towards Jews Is - I Hardly Know Whether To Say More Impious Or More Stupid, When Viewed In The Light Of Their Professed Principles. ... They Hardly Know Christ Was A Jew. And I Find Men, Educated, Supposing That Christ Spoke Greek. To My Feeling, This Deadness To The History Which Has Prepared Half Our World For Us, This Inability To Find Interest In Any Form Of Life That Is Not Clad In The Same Coat-tails And Flounces As Our Own, Lies Very Close To The Worst Kind Of Irreligion.

... 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.

Keep True, Never Be Ashamed Of Doing Right.

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

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.

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

The Wit Of A Family Is Usually Best Received Among Strangers.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nature Repairs Her Ravages,--repairs Them With Her Sunshine And With Human Labor.

The Last Refuge Of Intolerance Is In Not Tolerating The Intolerant.

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

But Faithfulness Can Feed On Suffering, And Knows No Disappointment.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A Human Life, I Think, Should Be Well Rooted In Some Spot Of A Native Land, Where It May Get The Love Of Tender Kinship For The Face Of Earth, For The Labors Men Go Forth To, For The Sounds And Accents That Haunt It, For Whatever Will Give That Early Home A Familiar, Unmistakable Difference Amidst The Future Widening Of Knowledge.

Expenditure--like Ugliness And Errors--becomes A Totally New Thing When We Attach Our Own Personality To It, And Measure It By That Wide Difference Which Is Manifest (in Our Own Sensations) Between Ourselves And Others.

We Are All Apt To Believe What The World Believes About Us.

Better A False Belief Than No Belief At All.

A Suppressed Resolve Will Betray Itself In The Eyes.

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

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

Death Is The King Of This World: 'tis His Park Where He Breeds Life To Feed Him. Cries Of Pain Are Music For His Banquet.

Don't Seem To He On The Lookout For Crows, Else You'll Set Other People Watching.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

And Dorothea..she Had No Dreams Of Being Praised Above Other Women. Feeling That There Was Always Something Better Which She Might Have Done If She Had Only Been Better And Known Better, Her Full Nature Spent Itself In Deeds Which Left No Great Name On The Earth, But The Effect Of Her Being On Those Around Her Was Incalculable. For The Growing Good Of The World Is Partly Dependent On Unhistoric Acts And On All Those Dorotheas Who Life Faithfully Their Hidden Lives And Rest In Unvisited Tombs. Middlemarch

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

Our Deeds Are Fetters That We Forge Ourselves.

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.

The Only Failure One Should Fear, Is Not Hugging To The Purpose They See As Best.

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

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.

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

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

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

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

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

I Shall Do Everything It Becomes Me To Do.

But Indefinite Visions Of Ambition Are Weak Against The Ease Of Doing What Is Habitual Or Beguilingly Agreeable; And We All Know The Difficulty Of Carrying Out A Resolve When We Secretly Long That It May Turn Out To Be Unnecessary. In Such States Of Mind The Most Incredulous Person Has A Private Leaning Towards Miracle: Impossible To Conceive How Our Wish Could Be Fulfilled, Still - Very Wonderful Things Have Happened!

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

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

Human Longings Are Perversely Obstinate; And To The Man Whose Mouth Is Watering For A Peach, It Is Of No Use To Offer The Largest Vegetable Marrow.

Hear Everything And Judge For Yourself

A Proud Woman Who Has Learned To Submit Carries All Her Pride To The Reinforcement Of Her Submission, And Looks Down With Severe Superiority On All Feminine Assumption As Unbecoming.

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.

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

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

May Every Soul That Touches Mine - Be It The Slightest Contact - Get There From Some Good; Some Little Grace; One Kindly Thought; One Aspiration Yet Unfelt; One Bit Of Courage For The Darkening Sky; One Gleam Of Faith To Brave The Thickening Ills Of Life; One Glimpse Of Brighter Skies Beyond The Gathering Mists - To Make This Life Worthwhile.

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

The Best Happiness Will Be To Escape The Worst Misery.

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

... It Is Because Sympathy Is But A Living Again Through Our Own Past In A New Form, That Confession Often Prompts A Response Of Confession.

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

Genius ... Is Necessarily Intolerant Of Fetters.

All Things Except Reason And Order Are Possible With A Mob.

A Woman Dictates Before Marriage In Order That She May Have An Appetite For Submission Afterwards.

It Is Not True That Love Makes All Things Easy; It Makes Us Choose What Is Difficult.

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

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

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.

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

What A Wretched Lot Of Old Shrivelled Creatures We Shall Be By-and-by. Never Mind - The Uglier We Get In The Eyes Of Others, The Lovelier We Shall Be To Each Other; That Has Always Been My Firm Faith About Friendship.

One's Self-satisfaction Is An Untaxed Kind Of Property Which It Is Very Unpleasant To Find Deprecated.

With Memory Set Smarting Like A Reopened Wound, A Man's Past Is Not Simply A Dead History, An Outworn Preparation Of The Present: It Is Not A Repented Error Shaken Loose From The Life: It Is A Still Quivering Part Of Himself, Bringing Shudders And Bitter Flavors And The Tinglings Of A Merited Shame.

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.

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

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

A Girl Of Eighteen Imagines The Feelings Behind The Face That Has Moved Her With Its Sympathetic Youth As Easily As Primitive People Imagined The Humors Of The Gods In Fair Weather. What Is She To Believe In If Not In This Vision Woven From Within?

... It Is One Thing To Like Defiance, And Another Thing To Like Its Consequences.

Great Feelings Will Often Take The Aspect Of Error, And Great Faith The Aspect Of Illusion.

Plainness Has Its Peculiar Temptations And Vices Quite As Much As Beauty.

Beautiful Women

Fear Was Stronger Than The Calculation Of Probabilities.

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

Our Virtues Are Dearer To Us The More We Have Had To Suffer For Them. It Is The Same With Our Children. All Profound Affection Entertains A Sacrifice. Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are, Just As They Are Often Better.

That Quiet Mutual Gaze Of A Trusting Husband And Wife Is Like The First Moment Of Rest Or Refuge From A Great Weariness Or A Great Danger-not To Be Interfered With By Speech Or Action Which Would Distract The Sensations From The Fresh Enjoyment Of Repose.

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

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

It So Often Happens That Others Are Measuring Us By Our Past Self While We Are Looking Back On That Self With A Mixture Of Disgust And Sorrow.

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

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

It Will Never Rain Roses: When We Want To Have More Roses We Must Plant More Trees.

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

Might, Could, Would - They Are Contemptible Auxiliaries.

Positive Thinking

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.

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.

Souls Live On In Perpetual Echoes.

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

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

Everybody Liked Better To Conjecture How The Thing Was, Than Simply To Know It; For Conjecture Soon Became More Confident Than Knowledge, And Had A More Liberal Allowance For The Incompatible.

Ignorance Gives One A Large Range Of Probabilities.

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

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

Falsehood Is Easy, Truth So Difficult.

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

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.

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.

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

The Soul Of Man, When It Gets Fairly Rotten, Will Bear You All Sorts Of Poisonous Toad-stools, And No Eye Can See Whence Came The Seed Thereof.

There Are Some Cases In Which The Sense Of Injury Breeds Not The Will To Inflict Injuries And Climb Over Them As A Ladder, But A Hatred Of All Injury.

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

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

A Perverted Moral Judgment Belongs To The Dogmatic System.

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.

Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical.

Human Experience

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.

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

I Like Not Only To Be Loved, But Also To Be Told That I Am Loved. I Am Not Sure That You Are Of The Same Mind. But The Realm Of Silence Is Large Enough Beyond The Grave. This Is The World Of Light And Speech, And I Shall Take Leave To Tell You That You Are Very Dear.

Don't Let Us Rejoice In Punishment, Even When The Hand Of God Alone Inflicts It. The Best Of Us Are But Poor Wretches, Just Saved From Shipwreck. Can We Feel Anything But Awe And Pity When We See A Fellow-passenger Swallowed By The Waves?

Selfish— A Judgment Readily Passed By Those Who Have Never Tested Their Own Power Of Sacrifice.

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Elizabeth Hurley

Kelley Armstrong

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