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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.

-George Eliot

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I've Seen Pretty Clear,

George Eliot

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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.

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When We Are Young We Think Our Troubles A Mighty Business - That The World Is Spread Out Expressly As A Stage For The Particular Drama Of Our Lives And That We Have A Right To Rant And Foam At The Mouth If We Are Crossed. I Have Done Enough Of That In My Time.

I Know Forgiveness Is A Man's Duty, But, To My Thinking, That Can Only Mean As You're To Give Up All Thoughts O' Taking Revenge: It Can Never Mean As You're T' Have Your Old Feelings Back Again, For That's Not Possible.

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

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.

There Are Characters Which Are Continually Creating Collisions And Nodes For Themselves In Dramas Which Nobody Is Prepared To Act With Them. Their Susceptibilities Will Clash Against Objects That Remain Innocently Quiet.

Boots And Shoes Are The Greatest Trouble Of My Life.

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

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

Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

What Quarrel, What Harshness, What Unbelief In Each Other Can Subsist In The Presence Of A Great Calamity, When All The Artificial Vesture Of Our Life Is Gone, And We Are All One With Each Other In Primitive Mortal Needs?

Saints And Martyrs Had Never Interested Maggie So Much As Sages And Poets.

The Strongest Principle Of Growth Lies In The Human Choice.

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

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

The Right To Rebellion Is The Right To Seek A Higher Rule, And Not To Wander In Mere Lawlessness.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

No Compliment Can Be Eloquent, Except As An Expression Of Indifference.

Oh, Child, Men's Men: Gentle Or Simple, They're Much Of A Muchness.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Souls Have Complexions Too: What Will Suit One Will Not Suit Another

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

Music Sweeps By Me As A Messenger - Carrying A Message That Is Not For Me

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.

Oh, Sir, The Loftiest Hopes On Earth Draw Lots With Meaner Hopes: Heroic Breasts, Breathing Bad Air, Run Risk Of Pestilence; Or, Lacking Lime-juice When They Cross The Line, May Languish With The Scurvy.

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

It's A Father's Duty To Give His Sons A Fine Chance.

Childhood Has No Forebodings; But Then, It Is Soothed By No Memories Of Outlived Sorrow.

Joy And Sorrow Are Both My Perpetual Companions, But The Joy Is Called Past And The Sorrow Present.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

May I Reach That Purest Heaven - Be To Other Souls The Cup Of Strength In Some Great Agony; Enkindle Generous Ardor, Feed Pure Love, Beget The Smiles That Have No Cruelty. Be The Sweet Presence Of A Good Diffused, And In The Diffusion Ever More Intense! So Shall I Join The Choir Invisible Whose Music Is The Gladness Of The World.

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.

Surely There Was Something Taught Her By This Experience Of Great Need; And She Must Be Learning A Secret Of Human Tenderness And Long-suffering, That The Less Erring Could Hardly Know?

Any Coward Can Fight A Battle When He's Sure Of Winning.

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

All Passion Becomes Strength When It Has An Outlet.

A Suppressed Resolve Will Betray Itself In The Eyes.

Harold, Like The Rest Of Us, Had Many Impressions Which Saved Him The Trouble Of Distinct Ideas.

Brothers Are So Unpleasant.

A Peasant Can No More Help Believing In A Traditional Superstition Than A Horse Can Help Trembling When Be Sees A Camel.

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

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

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.

It Had Already Occurred To Him That Books Were Stuff, And That Life Was Stupid.

One Has To Spend So Many Years In Learning How To Be Happy. I Am Just Beginning To Make Some Progress In The Science, And I Hope To Disprove Young's Theory That "as Soon As We Have Found The Key Of Life It Opes The Gates Of Death." Every Year Strips Us Of At Least One Vain Expectation, And Teaches Us To Reckon Some Solid Good In Its Stead. I Never Will Believe That Our Youngest Days Are Our Happiest. What A Miserable Augury For The Progress Of The Race And The Destination Of The Individual If The More Matured And Enlightened State Is The Less Happy One!

Quarrel? Nonsense; We Have Not Quarreled. If One Is Not To Get Into A Rage Sometimes, What Is The Good Of Being Friends?

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

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

When What Is Good Comes Of Age, And Is Likely To Live, There Is Reason For Rejoicing.

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.

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

The Fact Is, Both Callers And Work Thicken - The Former Sadly Interfering With The Latter.

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

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

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.

I Am Not Magnanimous Enough To Like People Who Speak To Me Without Seeming To See Me

...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.

The Difficult Task Of Knowing Another Soul Is Not For Young Gentlemen Whose Consciousness Is Chiefly Made Up Of Their Own Wishes.

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.

... As Usual I Am Suffering Much From Doubt As To The Worth Of What I Am Doing And Fear Lest I May Not Be Able To Complete It So As To Make It A Contribution To Literature And Not A Mere Addition To The Heap Of Books.

A Blush Is No Language; Only A Dubious Flag - Signal Which May Mean Either Of Two Contradictories

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.

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.

To See An Enemy Humiliated Gives A Certain Contentment, But This Is Jejune Compared With The Highly Blent Satisfaction Of Seeing Him Humiliated By Your Benevolent Action Or Concession On His Behalf. That Is The Sort Of Revenge Which Falls Into The Scale Of Virtue.

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.

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.

Enveloped In A Common Mist, We Seem To Walk In Clearness Ourselves, And Behold Only The Mist That Enshrouds Others.

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

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

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

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

I Am Not Resigned: I Am Not Sure Life Is Long Enough To Learn That Lesson.

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.

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.

To Manage Men One Ought To Have A Sharp Mind In A Velvet Sheath.

Effective Magic Is Transcendent Nature.

So To Live Is Heaven; To Make Undying Music In The World.

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

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.

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

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.

You Must Love Your Work, And Not Be Always Looking Over The Edge Of It, Wanting Your Play To Begin. And The Other Is, You Must Not Be Ashamed Of Your Work, And Think It Would Be More Honorable To You To Be Doing Something Else. You Must Have A Pride In Your Own Work And In Learning To Do It Well.

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

Grant Folly's Prayers That Hinder Folly's Wish, And Serve The Ends Of Wisdom.

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

To Be Candid, In Middlemarch Phraseology, Meant, To Use An Early Opportunity Of Letting Your Friends Know That You Did Not Take A Cheerful View Of Their Capacity, Their Conduct, Or Their Position; And A Robust Candor Never Waited To Be Asked For Its Opinion.

Shepperton Church Was A Very Different Looking Building Five-and-twenty Years Ago. To Be Sure, Its Substantial Stone Tower Looks At You Through Its Intelligent Eye, The Clock, With The Friendly Expression Of Former Days; But In Everything Else What Changes!

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

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

A Common Fallacy: To Imagine A Measure Will Be Easy Because We Have Private Motives For Desiring It.

The Prevarication And White Lies Which A Mind That Keeps Itself Ambitiously Pure Is As Uneasy Under As A Great Artist Under The False Touches That No Eye Detects But His Own, Are Worn As Lightly As Mere Trimmings When Once The Actions Have Become A Lie.

Fate Has Carried Me 'mid The Thick Arrows: I Will Keep My Stand Not Shrink And Let The Shaft Pass By My Breast To Pierce Another.

In The Man Whose Childhood Has Known Caresses And Kindness, There Is Always A Fiber Of Memory That Can Be Touched To Gentle Issues.

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

Signs Are Small Measurable Things, But Interpretations Are Illimitable, And In Girls Of Sweet, Ardent Nature, Every Sign Is Apt To Conjure Up Wonder, Hope, Belief, Vast As A Sky, And Colored By A Thimbleful Of Matter In The Shape Of Knowledge....wrong Reasoning Sometimes Lands Poor Mortals In Right Conclusions: Starting A Long Way Off The True Point, And Proceeding By Loops And Zigzags, We Now And Then Arrive Just Where We Ought To Be. Just Because Miss Brooke Was Hasty In Her Trust, It Is Not Therefore Clear That Mr. Casaubon Was Unworthy Of It.

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

... 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.

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

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

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

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

It Is One Thing To See Your Road, Another To Cut It.

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.

And Certainly, The Mistakes That We Male And Female Mortals Make When We Have Our Own Way Might Fairly Raise Some Wonder That We Are So Fond Of It.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun.

Affection Is The Broadest Basis Of A Good Life.

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.

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

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

Magnifying Glass

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

Men And Women Make Sad Mistakes About Their Own Symptoms, Taking Their Vague Uneasy Longings, Sometimes For Genius, Sometimes For Religion, And Oftener Still For A Mighty Love.

History Repeats Itself.

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

Man Cannot Choose His Duties.

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

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.

Receptiveness Is A Rare And Massive Power, Like Fortitude.

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?

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.

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.

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.

To Act With Doubleness Towards A Man Whose Own Conduct Was Double, Was So Near An Approach To Virtue That It Deserved To Be Called By No Meaner Name Than Diplomacy.

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.

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

There Are Various Orders Of Beauty, Causing Men To Make Fools Of Themselves In Various Styles, From The Desperate To The Sheepish; But There Is One Order Of Beauty Which Seems Made To Turn The Heads Not Only Of Men, But Of All Intelligent Mammals, Even Of Women. It Is A Beauty Like That Of Kittens, Or Very Small Downy Ducks Making Gentle Rippling Noises With Their Soft Bills, Or Babies Just Beginning To Toddle And To Engage In Conscious Mischief — A Beauty With Which You Can Never Be Angry, But That You Feel Ready To Crush For Inability To Comprehend The State Of Mind Into Which It Throws You.

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

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.

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

The Desire To Conquer Is Itself A Sort Of Subjection.

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.

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.

It's But Little Good You'll Do A-watering The Last Year's Crops

It Is Hard To Believe Long Together That Anything Is "worth While," Unless There Is Some Eye To Kindle In Common With Our Own, Some Brief Word Uttered Now And Then To Imply That What Is Infinitely Precious To Us Is Precious Alike To Another Mind.

Might, Could, Would - They Are Contemptible Auxiliaries.

Positive Thinking

We Hand Folks Over To God's Mercy, And Show None Ourselves.

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

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

But Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical, That Means Incongruous With The Phrases Of Current Talk Or Even Current Philosophy.

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.

There Are Many Victories Worse Than A Defeat.

If We Use Common Words On A Great Occasion, They Are The More Striking, Because They Are Felt At Once To Have A Particular Meaning, Like Old Banners, Or Everyday Clothes, Hung Up In A Sacred Place.

Pride Helps Us; And Pride Is Not A Bad Thing When It Only Urges Us To Hide Our Own Hurts—not To Hurt Others.

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

Blows Are Sarcasms Turned Stupid.

It Must Be Sad To Outlive Aught We Love.

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.

A Fool Or Idiot Is One Who Expects Things To Happen That Never Can Happen.

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

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

My Books Don't Seem To Belong To Me After I Have Once Written Them; And I Find Myself Delivering Opinions About Them As If I Had Nothing To Do With Them.

Let My Body Dwell In Poverty, And My Hands Be As The Hands Of The Toiler; But Let My Soul Be As A Temple Of Remembrance Where The Treasures Of Knowledge Enter And The Inner Sanctuary Is Hope.

I've Been Turning It Over In After-dinner Speeches, But It Looks Awkward-it's Not What People Are Used To-it Wants A Good Deal Of Latin To Make It Go Down.

Animals Are Such Agreeable Friends.

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.

A Toddling Little Girl Is A Centre Of Common Feeling Which Makes The Most Dissimilar People Understand Each Other.

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

There 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.

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

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

There Is No Short-cut No Patent Tram-road, To Wisdom. After All The Centuries Of Invention, The Soul's Path Lies Through The Thorny Wilderness Which Must Still Be Trodden In Solitude, With Bleeding Feet, With Sobs For Help, As It Was Trodden By Them Of Old Time.

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?

Our Life Is Determined For Us--and It Makes The Mind Very Free When We Give Up Wishing, And Only Think Of Bearing What Is Laid Upon Us, And Doing What Is Given Us To Do.

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.

Gossip Is A Sort Of Smoke That Comes From The Dirty Tobacco-pipes Of Those Who Diffuse It: It Proves Nothing But The Bad Taste Of The Smoker.

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

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

We Could Never Have Loved The Earth So Well If We Had No Childhood In It If It Were Not The Earth Where The Same Flowers Come Up Again Every Spring That We Used To Gather With Our Tiny Fingers As We Sat Lisping To Ourselves On The Grass . . .

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. . . .

Self-consciousness Of The Manner Is The Expensive Substitute For Simplicity.

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.

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

A Good Horse Makes Short Miles.

Marriage Must Be A Relation Either Of Sympathy Or Of Conquest.

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.

I Think I Dislike What I Don't Like More Than I Like What I Like.

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

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Chi Chi Rodriguez

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