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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.

-George Eliot

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It Is Always Your

George Eliot

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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.

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There Is One Order Of Beauty Which Seems Made To Turn Heads. 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.

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

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

Better A False Belief Than No Belief At All.

A Difference Of Taste In Jokes Is A Great Strain On The Affections.

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.

Thought Has Joys Apart, Even In Blackest Woe, And Seizing Some Fine Thread Of Verity Knows Momentary Godhead.

... 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.

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

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.

Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are.

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

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us.

Perhaps There Is No Time In A Summer's Day More Cheering, Than When The Warmth Of The Sun Is Just Beginning To Triumph Over The Freshness Of The Morning--when There Is Just A Lingering Hint Of Early Coolness To Keep Off Languor Under The Delicious Influence Of Warmth.

That By Desiring What Is Perfectly Good, Even When We Don't Quite Know What It Is And Cannot Do What We Would, We Are Part Of The Divine Power Against Evil -- Widening The Skirts Of Light And Making The Struggle With Darkness Narrower.

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

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

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

Our Dead Are Never Dead To Us, Until We Have Forgotten Them.

If You Could Make A Pudding Wi' Thinking O' The Batter, It 'ud Be Easy Getting Dinner.

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

Deeds Are The Pulse Of Time, His Beating Life, And Righteous Or Unrighteous, Being Done, Must Throb In After-throbs Till Time Itself Be Laid In Stillness, And The Universe Quiver And Breathe Upon No Mirror More.

When We Are Suddenly Released From An Acute Absorbing Bodily Pain, Our Heart And Senses Leap Out In New Freedom; We Think Even The Noise Of Streets Harmonious, And Are Ready To Hug The Tradesman Who Is Wrapping Up Our Change.

It Is A Common Enough Case, That Of A Man Being Suddenly Captivated By A Woman Nearly The Opposite Of His Ideal.

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

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

Nothing At Times Is More Expressive Than Silence.

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

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

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.

What Sunshine Is To Flowers, Smiles Are To Humanity.

Truth Has Rough Flavours If We Bite It Through.

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

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

Magnifying Glass

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!

There Is No Killing The Suspicion That Deceit Has Once Begotten.

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

If You Deliver An Opinion At All, It Is Mere Stupidity Not To Do It With An Air Of Conviction And Well-founded Knowledge. You Make It Your Own In Uttering It, And Naturally Get Fond Of It.

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.

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.

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

To Judge Wisely, We Must Know How Things Appear To The Unwise.

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

A Man's A Man. But When You See A King, You See The Work Of Many Thousand Men.

Human Feeling Is Like The Mighty Rivers That Bless The Earth: It Does Not Wait For Beauty — It Flows With Resistless Force And Brings Beauty With It.

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

Every Limit Is A Beginning As Well As An Ending.

Brothers Are So Unpleasant.

Go Forward With Joyful Confidence.

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.

That Golden Sky, Which Was The Doubly Blessed Symbol Of Advancing Day And Of Approaching Rest.

How Impossible It Is For Strong Healthy People To Understand The Way In Which Bodily Malaise And Suffering Eats At The Root Of One's Life! The Philosophy That Is True - The Religion That Is Strength To The Healthy - Is Constantly Emptiness To One When The Head Is Distracted And Every Sensation Is Oppressive.

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

Confound You Handsome Young Fellows! You Think Of Having It All Your Own Way In The World. You Don't Understand Women. They Don't Admire You Half So Much As You Admire Yourselves.

I Love Words; They Are The Quoits, The Bows, The Staves That Furnish The Gymnasium Of The Mind.

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

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.

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.

Ignorance Is Not So Damnable As Humbug, But When It Prescribes Pills It May Happen To Do More Harm.

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

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.

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

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

Where Jack Isn't Safe, Tom's In Danger.

But I Think It Is Hardly An Argument Against A Man's General Strength Of Character, That He Should Be Apt To Be Mastered By Love. A Fine Constitution Doesn't Insure One Against Small-pox Or Any Other Of Those Inevitable Diseases. A Man May Be Very Firm In Other Matters, And Yet Be Under A Sort Of Witchery From A Woman.

After All, People May Really Have In Them Some Vocation Which Is Not Quite Plain To Themselves, May They Not? They May Seem Idle And Weak Because They Are Growing. We Should Be Very Patient With Each Other, I Think.

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

Poetry And Art And Knowledge Are Sacred And Pure.

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

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

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

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.

The Nature O' Things Doesn't Change, Though It Seems As If One's Own Life Was Nothing But Change.

... One's Own Faults Are Always A Heavy Chain To Drag Through Life And One Can't Help Groaning Under The Weight Now And Then.

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

Even Success Needs Its Consolations.

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

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.

What Loneliness Is More Lonely Than Distrust?

There Is No Compensation For The Woman Who Feels That The Chief Relation Of Her Life Has Been No More Than A Mistake. She Has Lost Her Crown. The Deepest Secret Of Human Blessedness Has Half Whispered Itself To Her, And Then Forever Passed Her By.

It Cuts One Sadly To See The Grief Of Old People; They've No Way O' Working It Off; And The New Spring Brings No New Shoots Out On The Withered Tree.

There Is Nothing I Should Care More To Do, If It Were Possible, Than To Rouse The Imagination Of Men And Women To A Vision Of Human Claims In Those Races Of Their Fellow-men Who Most Differ From Them In Customs And Beliefs.

There Is No Despair So Absolute As That Which Comes With The First Moments Of Our First Great Sorrow, When We Have Not Yet Known What It Is To Have Suffered And Be Healed, To Have Despaired And Have Recovered Hope.

Where Women Love Each Other, Men Learn To Smother Their Mutual Dislike.

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

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

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

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

Keep True, Never Be Ashamed Of Doing Right.

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

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

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

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.

In Poor Rosamond's Mind There Was Not Room Enough For Luxuries To Look Small In.

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

Well, I Aren't Like A Bird-clapper, Forced To Make A Rattle When The Wind Blows On Me. I Can Keep My Own Counsel When There's No Good I' Speaking.

Acting Is Nothing More Or Less Than Playing. The Idea Is To Humanize Life.

The Intensest Form Of Hatred Is That Rooted In Fear.

Might, Could, Would - They Are Contemptible Auxiliaries.

Positive Thinking

And We Must Learn To Accommodate Ourselves To The Discovery That Some Of Those Cunningly-fashioned Instruments Called Human Souls Have Only A Very Limited Range Of Music, And Will Not Vibrate In The Least Under A Touch That Fills Others With Tremulous Rapture Or Quivering Agony.

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

What Believer Sees A Disturbing Omission Or Infelicity? The Text, Whether Of Prophet Or Of Poet, Expands For Whatever We Can Put Into It, And Even His Bad Grammar Is Sublime.

Fear Was Stronger Than The Calculation Of Probabilities.

But Certain Winds Will Make Men's Temper Bad.

It Is Always Fatal To Have Music Or Poetry Interrupted.

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.

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

... 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.

He Was One Of Those Men, And They Are Not The Commonest, Of Whom We Can Know The Best Only By Following Them Away From The Marketplace, The Platform, And The Pulpit, Entering With Them Into Their Own Homes, Hearing The Voice With Which They Speak To The Young And Aged About Their Own Hearthstone, And Witnessing Their Thoughtful Care For The Everyday Wants Of Everyday Companions, Who Take All Their Kindness As A Matter Of Course, And Not As A Subject For Panegyric.

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

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

There Is No Feeling, Perhaps, Except The Extremes Of Fear And Grief, That Does Not Find Relief In Music,--that Does Not Make A Man Sing Or Play The Better.

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

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

The Finest Language Is Mostly Made Up Of Simple Unimposing Words.

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.

Habit Is The Beneficent Harness Of Routine Which Enables Silly Men To Live Respectfully And Unhappy Men To Live Calmly

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Rather A Strong Check To One’s Self-complacency To Find How Much Of One’s Right Doing Depends On Not Being In Want Of Money.

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

It Must Be Sad To Outlive Aught We Love.

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat Itself.

The Best Happiness Will Be To Escape The Worst Misery.

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

There's Truth In Wine, And There May Be Some In Gin And Muddy Beer; But Whether It's Truth Worth My Knowing, Is Another Question.

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

A Picture Of Human Life Such As A Great Artist Can Give, Surprises Even The Trivial And The Selfish Into That Attention To What Is Apart From Themselves, Which May Be Called The Raw Material Of Moral Sentiment.

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.

Nice Distinctions Are Troublesome. It Is So Much Easier To Say That A Thing Is Black, Than To Discriminate The Particular Shade Of Brown, Blue, Or Green, To Which It Really Belongs. It Is So Much Easier To Make Up Your Mind That Your Neighbour Is Good For Nothing, Than To Enter Into All The Circumstances That Would Oblige You To Modify That Opinion.

Wit Is A Form Of Force That Leaves The Limbs At Rest.

God, Immortality, Duty - How Inconceivable The First, How Unbelievable The Second, How Peremptory And Absolute The Third.

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.

When You Get Me A Good Man Made Out Of Arguments, I Will Get You A Good Dinner With Reading You The Cookery Book.

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

Her Little Butterfly Soul Fluttered Incessantly Between Memory And Dubious Expectation.

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.

A Medical Man Likes To Make Psychological Observations, And Sometimes In The Pursuit Of Such Studies Is Too Easily Tempted Into Momentous Prophecy Which Life And Death Easily Set At Nought.

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

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.

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

There Are Moments When Our Passions Speak And Decide For Us ... Like A Fire Kindled Within Our Being To Which Everything Else In Us Is Mere Fuel.

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

"abroad," That Large Home Of Ruined Reputations.

A Child, More Than All Other Gifts That Earth Can Offer To Declining Man, Brings Hope With It, And Forward-looking Thoughts." —wordsworth.

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

Beautiful Women

Men And Women Are But Children Of A Larger Growth.

We Must Find Our Duties In What Comes To Us, Not In What Might Have Been.

Appearances Have Very Little To Do With Happiness.

What Is Your Religion? I Mean-not What You Know About Religion But The Belief That Helps You Most?

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

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

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

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us Which Would Have To Be Taken Into Account In An Explanation Of Our Gusts And Storms.

Our Growing Thought Makes Growing Revelation.

I Have Always Been Thinking Of The Different Ways In Which Christianity Is Taught, And Whenever I Find One Way That Makes It A Wider Blessing Than Any Other, I Cling To That As The Truest--i Mean That Which Takes In The Most Good Of All Kinds, And Brings In The Most People As Sharers In It. It Is Surely Better To Pardon Too Much, Than To Condemn Too Much.

As Leopard Feels At Home With Leopard.

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

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.

So Shall I Join The Choir Invisible Whose Music Is The Gladness Of The World.

Man Cannot Choose His Duties.

Subtract From The New Testament The Miraculous And Highly Impossible, And What Will Be The Remainder?

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.

Nothing Is So Good As It Seems Beforehand.

I Am Feeling Easy Now, And You Will Well Understand That After Undergoing Pain This Ease Is Opening Paradise. Invalids Must Be Excused For Being Eloquent About Themselves.

If I Could Only Fancy Myself Clever, It Would Be Better, But To Be A Failure Of Nature And To Know It Is Not A Comfortable Lot. It Is The Last Lesson One Learns, To Be Contented With One's Inferiority -- But It Must Be Learned.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun.

The Dull Mind, Once Arriving At An Inference That Flatters The Desire, Is Rarely Able To Retain The Impression That The Notion From Which The Inference Started Was Purely Problematic.

... 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.

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 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.

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

There Is No Sort Of Wrong Deed Of Which A Man Can Bear The Punishment Alone; You Can't Isolate Yourself And Say That The Evil That Is In You Shall Not Spread. Men's Lives Are As Thoroughly Blended With Each Other As The Air They Breathe; Evil Spreads As Necessarily As Disease.

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

O The Anguish Of That Thought That We Can Never Atone To Our Dead For The Stinted Affection We Gave Them, For The Light Answers We Returned To Their Plaints Or Their Pleadings, For The Little Reverence We Showed To That Sacred Human Soul That Lived So Close To Us, And Was The Divinest Thing God Had Given Us To Know!

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.

It Is A Sad Weakness In Us, After All, That The Thought Of A Man's Death Hallows Him Anew To Us; As If Life Were Not Sacred Too.

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 . . .

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

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.

Well, Well, My Boy, If Good Luck Knocks At Your Door, Don't You Put Your Head Out At Window And Tell It To Be Gone About Its Business, That's All.

Receptiveness Is A Rare And Massive Power, Like Fortitude.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Have No Courage To Write Much Unless I Am Written To. I Soon Begin To Think That There Are Plenty Of Other Correspondents More Interesting - So If You All Want To Hear From Me You Know The Conditions.

Does Any One Suppose That Private Prayer Is Necessarily Candid--necessarily Goes To The Roots Of Action! Private Prayer Is Inaudible Speech, And Speech Is Representative: Who Can Represent Himself Just As He Is, Even In His Own Reflections?

Any Coward Can Fight A Battle When He's Sure Of Winning; But Give Me The Man Who Has The Pluck To Fight When He's Sure Of Losing.

It Is Always Chilling, In Friendly Intercourse, To Say You Have No Opinion To Give.

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

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