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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.

-George Eliot

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Is Not This A

George Eliot

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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.

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...there's Never A Garden In All The Parish But What There's Endless Waste In It For Want O' Somebody As Could Use Everything Up. It's What I Think To Myself Sometimes, As There Need Nobody Run Short O' Victuals If The Land Was Made The Most On, And There Was Never A Morsel But What Could Find It's Way To A Mouth.

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

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

Science Is Properly More Scrupulous Than Dogma. Dogma Gives A Charter To Mistake, But The Very Breath Of Science Is A Contest With Mistake, And Must Keep The Conscience Alive.

The Tread Of Coming Footsteps Cheats The Midnight Watcher Who Holds Her Heart And Waits To Hear Them Pause, And Hears Them Never Pause, But Pass And Die.

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

It Is Always Good To Know, If Only In Passing, Charming Human Beings. It Refreshes One Like Flowers And Woods And Clear Brooks.

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.

Perspective, As Its Inventor Remarked, Is A Beautiful Thing. What Horrors Of Damp Huts, Where Human Beings Languish, May Not Become Picturesque Through Aerial Distance!

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.

The Years Seem To Rush By Now, And I Think Of Death As A Fast Approaching End Of A Journey-double And Treble Reason For Loving As Well As Working While It Is Day.

But Certain Winds Will Make Men's Temper Bad.

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.

When You See Fair Hair Be Pitiful.

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.

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.

... 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.

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

Given, A Man With Moderate Intellect, A Moral Standard Not Higher Than The Average, Some Rhetorical Affluence And A Great Glibness Of Speech, What Is The Career In Which, Without The Aid Of Birth Or Money, He May Most Easily Attain Power And Reputation In English Society? Where Is That Goshen Of Mediocrity In Which A Smattering Of Science And Learning Will Pass For Profound Instruction, Where Platitudes Will Be Accepted As Wisdom, Bigoted Narrowness As Holy Zeal, Unctuous Egoism As God-given Piety?

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

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.

Genius Is The Capacity For Receiving And Improving By Discipline.

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'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.

She Hates Everything That Is Not What She Longs For.

Deep, Unspeakable Suffering May Well Be Called A Baptism, A Regeneration, The Initiation Into A New State. Suffering Can Be Likened To A Baptism - The Passing Over The Threshold Of Pain And Grief And Anguish To Claim A New State Of Being.

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

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

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

The Vainest Woman Is Never Thoroughly Conscious Of Her Beauty Till She Is Loved By The Man Who Sets Her Own Passion Vibrating In Return.

The Troublesome Ones In A Family Are Usually Either The Wits Or The Idiots.

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

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

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.

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

What Loneliness Is More Lonely Than Distrust?

Our Instructed Vagrancy, Which Has Hardly Time To Linger By The Hedgerows, But Runs Away Early To The Tropics, And Is At Home With Palms And Banyans - Which Is Nourished On Books Of Travel, And Stretches The Theatre Of Its Imagination To The Zambesi.

It's All One Web, Sir. The Prosperity Of The Country Is One Web.

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

How Lovely The Little River Is, With Its Dark Changing Wavelets! It Seems To Me Like A Living Companion While I Wander Along The Bank, And Listen To Its Low, Placid Voice.

Our Passions Do Not Live Apart In Locked Chambers But Dress In Their Small Wardrobe Of Notions, Bring Their Provisions To A Common Table And Mess Together, Feeding Out Of The Common Store According To Their Appetite.

If We Need A True Conception Of The Popular Character To Guide Our Sympathies Rightly, We Need It Equally To Check Our Theories, And Direct Us In Their Application.

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

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?

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.

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

Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is Hardly Any Contact More Depressing To A Young Ardent Creature Than That Of A Mind In Which Years Full Of Knowledge Seem To Have Issued In A Blank Absence Of Interest Or Sympathy.

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.

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

Do We Not All Agree To Call Rapid Thought And Noble Impulse By The Name Of Inspiration?

The Commonest Man, Who Has His Ounce Of Sense And Feeling, Is Conscious Of The Difference Between A Lovely, Delicate Woman And A Coarse One. Even A Dog Feels A Difference In Her Presence.

One Can Say Everything Best Over A Meal.

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.

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

I Shall Be So Glad If You Will Tell Me What To Read. I Have Been Looking Into All The Books In The Library At Offendene, But There Is Nothing Readable. The Leaves All Stick Together And Smell Musty. I Wish I Could Write Books To Amuse Myself, As You Can! How Delightful It Must Be To Write Books After One's Own Taste Instead Of Reading Other People's! Home-made Books Must Be So Nice.

The Strongest Principle Of Growth Lies In The Human Choice.

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.

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

Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical.

Human Experience

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

Children Demand That Their Heroes Should Be Fleckless, And Easily Believe Them So .

For What We Call Illusions Are Often, In Truth, A Wider Vision Of Past And Present Realities - A Willing Movement Of A Man's Soul With The Larger Sweep Of The World's Forces - A Movement Towards A More Assured End Than The Chances Of A Single Life.

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.

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.

If Youth Is The Season Of Hope, It Is Often So Only In The Sense That Our Elders Are Hopeful About Us; For No Age Is So Apt As Youth To Think Its Emotions, Partings, And Resolves Are The Last Of Their Kind. Each Crisis Seems Final, Simply Because It Is New. We Are Told That The Oldest Inhabitants In Peru Do Not Cease To Be Agitated By The Earthquakes, But They Probably See Beyond Each Shock, And Reflect That There Are Plenty More To Come.

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

Two Angels Guide The Path Of Man, Both Aged And Yet Young. As Angels Are, Ripening Through Endless Years, On One He Leans: Some Call Her Memory, And Some Tradition; And Her Voice Is Sweet, With Deep Mysterious Accords: The Other, Floating Above, Holds Down A Lamp With Streams A Light Divine And Searching On The Earth, Compelling Eyes And Footsteps. Memory Yields, Yet Clings With Loving Check, And Shines Anew, Reflecting All The Rays Of That Bright Lamp Our Angel Reason Holds. We Had Not Walked But For Tradition; We Walk Evermore To Higher Paths By Brightening Reason's Lamp.

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.

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

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

Men Outlive Their Love, But They Don’t Outlive The Consequences Of Their Recklessness.

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

Mankind Is Not Disposed To Look Narrowly Into The Conduct Of Great Victors When Their Victory Is On The Right Side.

To Have In General But Little Feeling, Seems To Be The Only Security Against Feeling Too Much On Any Particular Occasion.

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

I'm Not One Of Those That Can See The Cat In The Dairy And Wonder What She's There For.

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

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

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

Particular Lies May Speak A General Truth.

Men Can Do Nothing Without The Make-believe Of A Beginning.

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.

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

The Very Truth Hath A Colour From The Disposition Of The Utterer.

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

I Found It Better For My Soul To Be Humble Before The Mysteries O' God's Dealings, And Not Be Making A Clatter About What I Could Never Understand.

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.

Veracity Is A Plant Of Paradise, And The Seeds Have Never Flourished Beyond The Walls.

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

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.

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

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

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

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

Excellence Encourages One About Life Generally; It Shows The Spiritual Wealth Of The World.

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.

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

Affection Is The Broadest Basis Of A Good Life.

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.

I Tell You There Isn't A Thing Under The Sun That Needs To Be Done At All, But What A Man Can Do Better Than A Woman, Unless It's Bearing Children, And They Do That In A Poor Make-shift Way; It Had Better Ha Been Left To The Men.

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

When One Is Five-and-twenty, One Has Not Chalk-stones At One's Finger-ends That The Touch Of A Handsome Girl Should Be Entirely Indifferent.

Time, Like Money, Is Measured By Our Needs.

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.

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

There Is No Human Being Who Having Both Passions And Thoughts Does Not Think In Consequences Of His Passions--does Not Find Images Rising In His Mind Which Soothe The Passion With Hope Or Sting It With Dread.

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.

News Is Often Dispersed As Thoughtlessly And Effectively As That Pollen Which The Bees Carry Off (having No Idea How Powdery They Are) When They Are Buzzing In Search Of Their Particular Nectar.

Animals Are Such Agreeable Friends.

When God Makes His Presence Felt Through Us, We Are Like The Burning Bush: Moses Never Took Any Heed What Sort Of Bush It Was—he Only Saw The Brightness Of The Lord.

A Maggot Must Be Born I' The Rotten Cheese To Like It.

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. . . .

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.

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

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.

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

Souls Live On In Perpetual Echoes.

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

Often The Soul Is Ripened Into Fuller Goodness While Age Has Spread An Ugly Film, So That Mere Glances Can Never Divine The Preciousness Of The Fruit.

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

The Saints Were Cowards Who Stood By To See Christ Crucified: They Should Have Flung Themselves Upon The Roman Spears, And Died In Vain-- The Grandest Death, To Die In Vain--for Love Greater Than Sways The Forces Of The World!

It Is Very Difficult To Be Learned; It Seems As If People Were Worn Out On The Way To Great Thoughts, And Can Never Enjoy Them Because They Are Too Tired.

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?

Pride Only Helps Us To Be Generous; It Never Makes Us So, Any More Than Vanity Makes Us Witty.

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

How To Be Happy

The Strength Of The Donkey Mind Lies In Adopting A Course Inversely As The Arguments Urged, Which, Well Considered, Requires As Great A Mental Force As The Direct Sequence.

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

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

The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music ... The Rounded Neck, The Dimpled Arm, Move Us By Something More Than Their Prettiness--by Their Close Kinship With All We Have Known Of Tenderness And Peace.

There Is No Sense Of Ease Like The Ease We Felt In Those Scenes Where We Were Born.

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?

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

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

It's No Trifle At Her Time At Her Time Of Life To Part With A Doctor Who Knows Her Constitution.

Awful Night! Ancestral Mystery Of Mysteries.

It Is In The Nature Of Foolish Reasonings To Seem Good To The Foolish Reasoner.

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

No Man Can Be Wise On An Empty Stomach.

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

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

As Leopard Feels At Home With Leopard.

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

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

That's What A Man Wants In A Wife, Mostly; He Wants To Make Sure One Fool Tells Him He's Wise.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Comes A Terrible Moment To Many Souls When The Great Movements Of The World, The Larger Destinies Of Mankind, Which Have Lain Aloof In Newspapers And Other Neglected Reading, Enter Like An Earthquake Into Their Own Lives--when The Slow Urgency Of Growing Generations Turns Into The Tread Of An Invading Army Or The Dire Clash Of Civil War, And Grey Fathers Know Nothing To Seek For But The Corpses Of Their Blooming Sons, And Girls Forget All Vanity To Make Lint And Bandages Which May Serve For The Shattered Limbs Of Their Betrothed Husbands.

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

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.

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.

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

I Like Breakfast-time Better Than Any Other Moment In The Day. No Dust Has Settled On One's Mind Then, And It Presents A Clear Mirror To The Rays Of Things.

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

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

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

These Gems Have Life In Them: Their Colors Speak, Say What Words Fail Of.

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

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.

To Know Intense Joy Without A Strong Bodily Frame, One Must Have An Enthusiastic Soul.

Appearances Have Very Little To Do With Happiness.

Her Heart Went Out To Him With A Stronger Movement Than Ever, At The Thought That People Would Blame Him. Maggie Hated Blame; She Had Been Blamed Her Whole Life, And Nothing Had Come Of It But Evil Tempers.

Falsehood Is Easy, Truth So Difficult.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

No Anguish I Have Had To Bear On Your Account Has Been Too Heavy A Price To Pay For The New Life Into Which I Have Entered In Loving You.

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

... We Are Most Of Us Brought Up In The Notion That The Highest Motive For Not Doing A Wrong Is Something Irrespective Of The Beings Who Would Suffer The Wrong.

Family Likeness Has Often A Deep Sadness In It. Nature, That Great Tragic Dramatist, Knits Us Together By Bone And Muscle, And Divides Us By The Subtler Web Of Our Brains; Blends Yearning And Repulsion; And Ties Us By Our Heart-strings To The Beings That Jar Us At Every Movement.

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

The Beginning Of Compunction Is The Beginning Of A New Life.

If You Are To Rule Men, You Must Rule Them Through Their Own Ideas.

Things Don't Happen Because They're Bad Or Good, Else All Eggs Would Be Addled Or None At All, And At The Most It Is But Six To The Dozen. There's Good Chances And Bad Chances, And Nobody's Luck Is Pulled Only By One String.

But How Little We Know What Would Make Paradise For Our Neighbours! We Judge From Our Own Desires, And Our Neighbours Themselves Are Not Always Open Enough Even To Throw Out A Hint Of Theirs.

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.

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

Brothers Are So Unpleasant.

Poetry And Art And Knowledge Are Sacred And Pure.

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

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.

It Is The Moment When Our Resolution Seems About To Become Irrevocable--when The Fatal Iron Gates Are About To Close Upon Us--that Tests Our Strength. Then, After Hours Of Clear Reasoning And Firm Conviction, We Snatch At Any Sophistry That Will Nullify Our Long Struggles, And Bring Us The Defeat That We Love Better Than Victory.

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.

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

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

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Gouverneur Morris

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