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

-George Eliot

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I've Always Felt That

George Eliot

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

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Can Anything Be More Disgusting Than To Hear People Called 'educated' Making Small Jokes About Eating Ham, And Showing Themselves Empty Of Any Real Knowledge As To The Relation Of Their Own Social And Religious Life To The History Of The People They Think Themselves Witty In Insulting? [...] The Best Thing That Can Be Said Of It Is, That It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Narrowness—in Plain English, The Stupidity Which Is Still The Average Mark Of Our Culture.

Wise Books For Half The Truths They Hold Are Honored Tombs.

Only Those Who Know The Supremacy Of The Intellectual Life──the Life Which Has A Seed Of Ennobling Thought And Purpose Within──can Understand The Grief Of One Who Falls From That Serene Activity Into The Absorbing Soul-wasting Struggle With Worldly Annoyances.

An Ingenious Web Of Probabilities Is The Surest Screen A Wise Man Can Place Between Himself And The Truth.

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

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.

One Can Say Everything Best Over A Meal.

... 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.

Hear Everything And Judge For Yourself

Blows Are Sarcasms Turned Stupid.

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.

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

We Judge Other According To Results; How Else?--not Knowing The Process By Which Results Are Arrived At.

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat Itself.

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

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

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

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

There Is Heroism Even In The Circles Of Hell For Fellow-sinners Who Cling To Each Other In The Fiery Whirlwind And Never Recriminate.

"abroad," That Large Home Of Ruined Reputations.

A Suppressed Resolve Will Betray Itself In The Eyes.

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

In The Vain Laughter Of Folly Wisdom Hears Half Its Applause.

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

Resolve Will Melt No Rocks. But It Can Scale Them.

Our Deeds Still Travel With Us From Afar, And What We Have Been Makes Us What We Are.

Unwonted Circumstances May Make Us All Rather Unlike Ourselves: There Are Conditions Under Which The Most Majestic Person Is Obliged To Sneeze, And Our Emotions Are Liable To Be Acted On In The Same Incongruous Manner.

Play Not With Paradoxes. That Caustic Which You Handle In Order To Scorch Others May Happen To Sear Your Own Fingers And Make Them Dead To The Quality Of Things.

So Our Lives Glide On: The River Ends We Don't Know Where, And The Sea Begins, And Then There Is No More Jumping Ashore.

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.

I Could Not Without Vile Hypocrisy And A Miserable Truckling To The Smile Of The World ... Profess To Join In Worship Which I Wholly Disapprove.

There Are Few Of Us That Are Not Rather Ashamed Of Our Sins And Follies As We Look Out On The Blessed Morning Sunlight, Which Comes To Us Like A Bright-winged Angel Beckoning Us To Quit The Old Path Of Vanity That Stretches Its Dreary Length Behind Us.

Death Was Not To Be A Leap: It Was To Be A Long Descent Under Thickening Shadows.

Nature Has Her Language, And She Is Not Unveracious; But We Don't Know All The Intricacies Of Her Syntax Just Yet, And In A Hasty Reading We May Happen To Extract The Very Opposite Of Her Real Meaning.

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

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

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.

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?

To The Old, Sorrow Is Sorrow; To The Young, It Is Despair.

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

...though There's Reasons In Things As Nobody Knows On---- That's Pretty Much What I've Made Out; Yet Some Folks Are So Wise They'll Find You Fifty Reasons Straight Off, And All The While The Real Reason's Winking At 'em In The Corner, And They Niver See't.

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

The Moment Of Finding A Fellow-creature Is Often As Full Of Mingled Doubt And Exultation, As The Moment Of Finding An Idea.

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

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

Nature Repairs Her Ravages, But Not All. The Uptorn Trees Are Not Rooted Again; The Parted Hills Are Left Scarred; If There Is A New Growth, The Trees Are Not The Same As The Old, And The Hills Underneath Their Green Vesture Bear The Marks Of The Past Rending. To The Eyes That Have Dwelt On The Past, There Is No Thorough Repair.

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

Delicious Autumn! My Very Soul Is Wedded To It.

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

Sweet Truth Is A Queen Proud And Mighty-- Her Throne Is In Heaven Above.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Something Better

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.

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.

What Do We Live For, If Not To Make Life Less Difficult For Each Other?

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

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

For Character Too Is A Process And An Unfoldingamong Our Valued Friends Is There Not Someone Or Other Who Is A Little Too Self Confident And Disdainful; Whose Distinguished Mind Is A Little Spotted With Commonness; Who Is A Little Pinched Here And Protruberent There With Native Prejudices; Or Whose Better Energies Are Liable To Lapse Down The Wrong Channel Under The Influence Of Transient Solicitations?

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

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

Your Dunce Who Can't Do His Sums Always Has A Taste For The Infinite.

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

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.

Marriage Is So Unlike Everything Else. There Is Something Even Awful In The Nearness It Brings. Even If We Loved Someone Else Better Than - Than Those We Were Married To, It Would Be No Use. I Mean, Marriage Drinks Up All Our Power Of Giving Or Getting Any Blessedness In That Sort Of Love. I Know It May Be Very Dear, But It Murders Our Marriage, And Then The Marriage Stays With Us Like A Murder, And Everything Else Is Gone.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

We Are Apt To Think It The Finest Era Of The World When America Was Beginning To Be Discovered, When A Bold Sailor, Even If He Were Wrecked, Might Alight On A New Kingdom.

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

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

To Be A Poet Is To Have A Soul So Quick To Discern, That No Shade Of Quality Escapes It, And So Quick To Feel, That Discernment Is But A Hand Playing With Finely-ordered Variety On The Chords Of Emotion--a Soul In Which Knowledge Passes Instantaneously Into Feeling, And Feeling Flashes Back As A New Organ Of Knowledge.

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.

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

Time, Like Money, Is Measured By Our Needs.

It Is The Way With Half The Truth Amidst Which We Live, That It Only Haunts Us And Makes Dull Pulsations That Are Never Born Into Sound.

What Should I Do—how Should I Act Now, This Very Day . . . What She Would Resolve To Do That Day Did Not Yet Seem Quite Clear, But Something That She Could Achieve Stirred Her As With An Approaching Murmur Which Would Soon Gather Distinctness.

Every Year Strips Us Of At Least One Vain Expectation, And Teaches Us To Reckon Some Solid Good In Its Stead.

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

In The Chequered Area Of Human Experience The Seasons Are All Mingled As In The Golden Age: Fruit And Blossom Hang Together; In The Same Moment The Sickle Is Reaping And The Seed Is Sprinkled; One Tends The Green Cluster And Another Treads The Wine-press. Nay, In Each Of Our Lives Harvest And Spring-time Are Continually One, Until Death Himself Gathers Us And Sows Us Anew In His Invisible Fields.

I Think The Effective Use Of Quotation Is An Important Point In The Art Of Writing. Given Sparingly, Quotations Serve Admirably As A Climax Or As A Corroboration, But When They Are Long And Frequent, They Seriously Weaken The Effect Of A Book. We Lose Sight Of The Writer - He Scatters Our Sympathy Among Others Than Himself - And The Ideas Which He Himself Advances Are Not Knit Together With Our Impression Of His Personality.

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.

The Light Can Be A Curtain As Well As The Darkness.

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

New Experiences

I Carry My Unwritten Poems In Cipher On My Face!

The Memory Has As Many Moods As The Temper, And Shifts Its Scenery Like A Diorama.

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

Ignorance ... Is A Painless Evil; So, I Should Think, Is Dirt, Considering The Merry Faces That Go Along With It.

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

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

... One Always Believes One's Own Town To Be More Stupid Than Any Other.

Quick Souls Have Their Intensest Life In The First Anticipatory Sketch Of What May Or Will Be, And The Pursuit Of Their Wish Is The Pursuit Of That Paradisiacal Vision Which Only Impelled Them, And Is Left Farther And Farther Behind, Vanishing Forever Even Out Of Hope In The Moment Which Is Called Success.

Those Bitter Sorrows Of Childhood!-- When Sorrow Is All New And Strange, When Hope Has Not Yet Got Wings To Fly Beyond The Days And Weeks, And The Space From Summer To Summer Seems Measureless.

And When A Woman's Will Is As Strong As The Man's Who Wants To Govern Her, Half Her Strength Must Be Concealment.

The Impulse To Confession Almost Always Requires The Presence Of A Fresh Ear And A Fresh Heart; And In Our Moments Of Spiritual Need, The Man To Whom We Have No Tie But Our Common Nature, Seems Nearer To Us Than Mother, Brother, Or Friend. Our Daily Familiar Life Is But A Hiding Of Ourselves From Each Other Behind A Screen Of Trivial Words And Deeds, And Those Who Sit With Us At The Same Hearth, Are Often The Farthest Off From The Deep Human Soul Within Us, Full Of Unspoken Evil And Unacted Good.

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. Knowledge, Through Patient And Frugal Centuries, Enlarges Discovery And Makes Record Of It; Ignorance, Wanting Its Day's Dinner, Lights A Fire With The Record, And Gives A Flavour To Its One Roast With The Burnt Souls Of Many Generations.

Inclination Snatches Arguments To Make Indulgence Seem Judicious Choice.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Adventure Is Not Outside Man; It Is Within.

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

Worldly Faces Never Look So Worldly As At A Funeral.

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.

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

There Is Much Pain That Is Quite Noiseless; And Vibrations That Make Human Agonies Are Often A Mere Whisper In The Roar Of Hurrying Existence. There Are Glances Of Hatred That Stab And Raise No Cry Of Murder; Robberies That Leave Man Or Woman For Ever Beggared Of Peace And Joy, Yet Kept Secret By The Sufferer --committed To No Sound Except That Of Low Moans In The Night, Seen In No Writing Except That Made On The Face By The Slow Months Of Suppressed Anguish And Early Morning Tears. Many An Inherited Sorrow That Has Marred A Life Has Been Breathed Into No Human Ear.

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.

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

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

Some People Are Born To Make Life Pretty, And Others To Grumble That It Is Not Pretty Enough.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Where You Have Friends You Should Not Go To Inns.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

There Is Only One Failure In Life Possible, And That Is Not To Be True To The Best One Knows.

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

Trouble's Made Us Kin.

Keep True, Never Be Ashamed Of Doing Right.

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

All Honour And Reverence To The Divine Beauty Of Form! Let Us Cultivate It To The Utmost In Men, Women And Children -- In Our Gardens And In Our Houses. But Let Us Love That Other Beauty Too, Which Lies In No Secret Of Proportion But In The Secret Of Deep Human Sympathy.

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

I Can't Abide To See Men Throw Away Their Tools I' That Way, The Minute The Clock Begins To Strike, As If They Took No Pleasure I' Their Work, And Was Afraid O' Doing A Stroke Too Much.... I Hate To See A Man's Arms Drop Down As If He Was Shot, Before The Clock's Fairly Struck, Just As If He'd Never A Bit O' Pride And Delight In's Work. The Very Grindstone 'ull Go On Turning A Bit After You Loose It.

She Was No Longer Wrestling With The Grief, But Could Sit Down With It As A Lasting Companion And Make It A Sharer In Her Thoughts.

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

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.

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

One Can Begin So Many Things With A New Person! - Even Begin To Be A Better Man.

Finding Yourself

Pity That Consequences Are Determined Not By Excuses But By Actions!

It's Them As Take Advantage That Get Advantage I' This World, I Think: Folks Have To Wait Long Enough Afore It's Brought To 'em.

Anger Seek It Prey,-- Something To Tear With Sharp-edged Tooth And Claw, Like Not To Go Off Hungry, Leaving Love To Feast On Milk And Honeycomb At Will.

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.

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

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

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

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

We Cannot Reform Our Forefathers.

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.

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.

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

For Character Too Is A Process And An Unfolding. . . Among Our Valued Friends Is There Not Someone Or Other Who Is A Little Too Self Confident And Disdainful. . . .

To My Thinking, It Is More Pitiable To Bore Than To Be Bored.

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.

Better A Wrong Will Than A Wavering; Better A Steadfast Enemy Than An Uncertain Friend; Better A False Belief Than No Belief At All.

The Thing We Look Forward To Often Comes To Pass, But Never Precisely In The Way We Have Imagined To Ourselves.

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.

There Are Glances Of Hatred That Stab, And Raise No Cry Of Murder.

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

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.

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.

... Goodness Is Of A Modest Nature, Easily Discouraged, And When Much Elbowed In Early Life By Unabashed Vices, Is Apt To Retire Into Extreme Privacy, So That It Is More Easily Believed In By Those Who Construct A Selfish Old Gentleman Theoretically, Than By Those Who Form The Narrower Judgments Based On His Personal Acquaintance.

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.

Satan Was A Blunderer ... Who Made A Stupendous Failure. If He Had Succeeded, We Should All Have Been Worshipping Him, And His Portrait Would Have Been More Flattering.

One Soweth And Another Reapeth Is A Verity That Applies To Evil As Well As Good.

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

One Has To Spend Many Years In Learning How To Be Happy.

How To Be Happy

Receptiveness Is A Rare And Massive Power, Like Fortitude.

Appearances Have Very Little To Do With Happiness.

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.

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.

... 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.

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

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

Falsehood Is Easy, Truth So Difficult.

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

The Mother's Love Is At First An Absorbing Delight, Blunting All Other Sensibilities; It Is An Expansion Of The Animal Existence.

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.

The Sublime Delight Of Truthful Speech To One Who Has The Great Gift Of Uttering It, Will Make Itself Felt Even Through The Pangs Of Sorrow.

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.

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

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

Of All Forms Of Human Error, Prophesy Is The Most Avoidable.

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.

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

Consequences Are Unpitying. Our Deeds Carry Their Terrible Consequences, Quite Apart From Any Fluctuations That Went Before—consequences That Are Hardly Ever Confined To Ourselves. And It Is Best To Fix Our Minds On That Certainty, Instead Of Considering What May Be The Elements Of Excuse For Us.

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

Blessed Is The Man, Who Having Nothing To Say, Abstains From Giving Wordy Evidence Of The Fact.

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

I've Seen Pretty Clear, Ever Since I Was A Young Un, As Religion's Something Else Besides Notions. It Isn't Notions Sets People Doing The Right Things--it's Feelings. It's The Same With The Notions In Religion As It Is With Math'matics--a Man May Be Able To Work Problems Straight Off In's Head As He Sits By The Fire And Smokes His Pipe; But If He Has To Make A Machine Or A Building, He Must Have A Will And A Resolution, And Love Something Else Better Than His Own Ease.

It's Never Too Late To Be Who You Were Meant To Be.

You Must Mind And Not Lower The Church In People's Eyes By Seeming To Be Frightened About It For Such A Little Thing.

The Human Heart Finds Nowhere Shelter But In Human Kind.

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