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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.

-George Eliot

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It Is Hard To

George Eliot

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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.

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A Woman's Heart Must Be Of Such A Size And No Larger, Else It Must Be Pressed Small, Like Chinese Feet; Her Happiness Is To Be Made As Cakes Are, By A Fixed Recipe.

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

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

Souls Live On In Perpetual Echoes.

The Human Heart Finds Nowhere Shelter But In Human Kind.

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.

I Like Not Only To Be Loved, But Also To Be Told I Am Loved.

In Spite Of His Practical Ability, Some Of His Experience Had Petrified Into Maxims And Quotations.

Love Supreme Defies All Sophistry.

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

Knightly Love Is Blent With Reverence As Heavenly Air Is Blent With Heavenly Blue.

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

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.

No Evil Dooms Us Hopelessly Except The Evil We Love, And Desire To Continue In, And Make No Effort To Escape From.

The Idea Of Duty--that Recognition Of Something To Be Lived For Beyond The Mere Satisfaction Of Self--is To The Moral Life What The Addition Of A Great Central Ganglion Is To Animal Life.

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.

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

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat 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.

Death Is The Only Physician, The Shadow Of His Valley The Only Journeying That Will Cure Us Of Age And The Gathering Fatigue Of Years.

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

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

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

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.

I Am Open To Conviction On All Points Except Dinner And Debts. I Hold That The One Must Be Eaten And The Other Paid.

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

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

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.

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

... The True Seeing Is Within; And Painting Stares At You With An Insistent Imperfection.

He Was Of An Impressible Nature, And Lived A Great Deal In Other People's Opinions And Feelings Concerning Himself.

The Dew-bead Gem Of Earth And Sky Begotten.

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

Truth Has Rough Flavours If We Bite It Through.

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

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.

Young Love-making--that Gossamer Web! Even The Points It Clings To--the Things Whence Its Subtle Interlacings Are Swung--are Scarcely Perceptible: Momentary Touches Of Finger-tips, Meetings Of Rays From Blue And Dark Orbs, Unfinished Phrases, Lightest Changes Of Cheek And Lip, Faintest Tremors. The Web Itself Is Made Of Spontaneous Beliefs And Indefinable Joys, Yearnings Of One Life Towards Another, Visions Of Completeness, Indefinite Trust.

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.

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.

The Most Solid Comfort One Can Fall Back Upon Is The Thought That The Business Of One's Life Is To Help In Some Small Way To Reduce The Sum Of Ignorance, Degradation And Misery On The Face Of This Beautiful Earth.

Hold Up Your Head! You Were Not Made For Failure, You Were Made For Victory. Go Forward With A Joyful Confidence.

Our Selfishness Is So Robust And Many-clutching That, Well Encouraged, It Easily Devours All Sustenance Away From Our Poor Little Scruples.

When Our Life Is A Continuous Trial, The Moments Of Respite Seem Only To Substitute The Heaviness Of Dread For The Heaviness Of Actual Suffering; The Curtain Of Cloud Seems Parted An Instant Only That We May Measure All Its Horror As It Hangs Low, Black, And Imminent, In Contrast With The Transient Brightness; The Waterdrops That Visit The Parched Lips In The Desert Bear With Them Only The Keen Imagination Of Thirst.

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

Kisses Honeyed By Oblivion.

The Golden Moments In The Stream Of Life Rush Past Us, And We See Nothing But Sand; The Angels Come To Visit Us, And We Only Know Them When They Are Gone.

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

Particular Lies May Speak A General Truth.

Marriage, Which Has Been The Bourne Of So Many Narratives, Is Still A Great Beginning, As It Was To Adam And Eve, Who Kept Their Honey-moon In Eden, But Had Their First Little One Among The Thorns And Thistles Of The Wilderness. It Is Still The Beginning Of The Home Epic - The Gradual Conquest Or Irremediable Loss Of That Complete Union Which Make The Advancing Years A Climax, And Age The Harvest Of Sweet Memories In Common.

Fine Art, Poetry, That Kind Of Thing, Elevates A Nation.

Much Of Our Waking Experience Is But A Dream In The Daylight.

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.

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

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 Bachelor's Children Are Always Young: They're Immortal Children - Always Lisping, Waddling, Helpless, And With A Chance Of Turning Out Good.

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.

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

It Is Better - It Shall Be Better With Me Because I Have Known You.

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?

Ingenious Philosophers Tell You, Perhaps, That The Great Work Of The Steam-engine Is To Create Leisure For Mankind. Do Not Believe Them; It Only Creates A Vacuum For Eager Thought To Rush In.

It Was One Of Those Dangerous Moments When Speech Is At Once Sincere And Deceptive - When Feeling, Rising High Above Its Average Depth, Leaves Flood-marks Which Are Never Reached Again.

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

Even Success Needs Its Consolations.

I Don't Feel Sure About Doing Good In Any Way Now; Everything Seems Like Going On A Mission To A People Whose Language I Don't Know.

But, Bless Us, Things May Be Lovable That Are Not Altogether Handsome, I Hope?

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.

Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

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.

A Suppressed Resolve Will Betray Itself In The Eyes.

With A Single Drop Of Ink For A Mirror, The Egyptian Sorcerer Undertakes To Reveal To Any Chance Comer Far-reaching Visions Of The Past. This Is What I Undertake To Do For You, Reader.

It's Easy Finding Reasons Why Other Folks Should Be Patient.

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

Hear Everything And Judge For Yourself

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.

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.

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

The Strongest Principle Of Growth Lies In The Human Choice.

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

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.

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

Our Words Have Wings, But Fly Not Where We Would.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Education Is An Asset No Man Can Take Away.

What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Cant Use It?

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

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

There's Many A Good Bit O' Work Done With A Sad Heart.

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

... The Business Of Life Shuts Us Up Within The Environs Of London And Within Sight Of Human Advancement, Which I Should Be So Very Glad To Believe In Without Seeing.

You Know Nothing About Hope, That Immortal, Delicious Maiden Forever Courted Forever Propitious, Whom Fools Have Called Deceitful, As If It Were Hope That Carried The Cup Of Disappointment, Whereas It Is Her Deadly Enemy, Certainty, Whom She Only Es

But Certain Winds Will Make Men's Temper Bad.

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

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

It Is Not True That A Man's Intellectual Power Is, Like The Strength Of A Timber Beam, To Be Measured By Its Weakest Point.

I Have A Knack Of Hoping, Which Is As Good As An Estate.

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

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

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

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

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.

In Travelling I Shape Myself Betimes To Idleness And Take Fools' Pleasure

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.

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.

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

I Carry My Unwritten Poems In Cipher On My Face!

Each Thought Is A Nail That Is Driven In Structures That Cannot Decay; And The Mansion At Last Will Be Given To Us As We Build It Each Day.

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

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

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

Anger And Jealousy Can No More Bear To Lose Sight Of Their Objects Than Love.

Of A Truth, Knowledge Is Power, But It Is A Power Reined By Scruple, Having A Conscience Of What Must Be And What May Be. . . .

Knowledge Is Power

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

When You See Fair Hair Be Pitiful.

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

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

Character Is Not Cut In Marble - It Is Not Something Solid And Unalterable. It Is Something Living And Changing, And May Become Diseased As Our Bodies Do.

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

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.

Among All The Many Kinds Of First Love, That Which Begins In Childish Companionship Is The Strongest And Most Enduring: When Passion Comes To Unite Its Force To Long Affection, Love Is At Its Spring-tide.

The Poverty Of Our Imagination Is No Measure Of Say The World's Resources. Our Posterity Will No Doubt Get Fuel In Ways That We Are Unable To Devise For Them.

Some Discouragement, Some Faintness Of Heart At The New Real Future Which Replaces The Imaginary, Is Not Unusual, And We Do Not Expect People To Be Deeply Moved By What Is Not Unusual. That Element Of Tragedy Which Lies In The Very Fact Of Frequency Has Not Yet Wrought Itself Into The Coarse Emotion Of Mankind, And Perhaps Our Frames Could Hardly Bear Much Of It. If We Had A Keen Vision And Feeling Of All Ordinary Human Life, It Would Be Like Hearing The Grass Grow And The Squirrel's Heart Beat, And We Should Die Of That Roar Which Lies On The Other Side Of Silence.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A Woman's Rank Lies In The Fulness Of Her Womanhood: Therein Alone She Is Royal.

A Friend Is One To Whom One May Pour Out The Contents Of One's Heart, Chaff And Grain Together, Knowing That Gentle Hands Will Take And Sift It, Keep What Is Worth Keeping, And With A Breath Of Kindness, Blow The Rest Away.

The Human Soul Is Hospitable, And Will Entertain Conflicting Sentiments And Contradictory Opinions With Much Impartiality.

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

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

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.

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?

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

It Belongs To Every Large Nature, When It Is Not Under The Immediate Power Of Some Strong Unquestioning Emotion, To Suspect Itself, And Doubt The Truth Of Its Own Impressions, Conscious Of Possibilities Beyond Its Own Horizon.

It Is An Uneasy Lot At Best, To Be What We Call Highly Taught And Yet Not To Enjoy: To Be Present At This Great Spectacle Of Life And Never To Be Liberated From A Small Hungry Shivering Self.

The Mysterious Complexity Of Our Life Is Not To Be Embraced By Maxims ... To Lace Ourselves Up In Formulas Of That Sort Is To Repress All The Divine Promptings And Inspirations That Spring From Growing Insight And Sympathy.

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! What Hymning Of Cancerous Vices May We Not Languish Over As Sublimest Art In The Safe Remoteness Of A Strange Language And Artificial Phrase! Yet We Keep A Repugnance To Rheumatism And Other Painful Effects When Presented In Our Personal Experience.

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

Leisure Is Gone,--gone Where The Spinning-wheels Are Gone, And The Pack-horses, And The Slow Wagons, And The Peddlers, Who Brought Bargains To The Door On Sunny Afternoons.

Sunny Afternoon

He Was At A Starting Point Which Makes Many A Man's Career A Fine Subject For Betting, If There Were Any Gentlemen Given To That Amusement Who Could Appreciate The Complicated Probabilities Of An Arduous Purpose. . . .

... 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.

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

Art Is The Nearest Thing To Life; It Is A Mode Of Amplifying Experience And Extending Our Contact With Our Fellow Men Beyond The Bounds Of Our Personal Lot.

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

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.

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

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

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

Ah, I Often Think It's Wi' Th' Old Folks As It Is Wi' The Babies; They're Satisfied Wi' Looking, No Matter What They're Looking At. It's God A'mighty's Way O' Quietening 'em, I Reckon, Afore They Go To Sleep.

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

Better Spend An Extra Hundred Or Two On Your Son's Education, Than Leave It Him In Your Will.

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.

Our Thoughts Are Often Worse Than We Are.

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

It Seems To Me We Can Never Give Up Longing And Wishing While We Are Thoroughly Alive. There Are Certain Things We Feel To Be Beautiful And Good, And We Must Hunger After Them.

In High Vengeance There Is Noble Scorn.

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.

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.

Under Every Guilty Secret There Is Hidden A Brood Of Guilty Wishes, Whose Unwholesome Infecting Life Is Cherished By The Darkness.

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

Blessed Influence Of One True Loving Human Soul On Another! Not Calculable By Algebra, Not Deducible By Logic, But Mysterious, Effectual, Mighty As The Hidden Process By Which The Tiny Seed Is Quickened, And Bursts Forth Into Tall Stem And Broad Leaf, And Glowing Tasseled Flower.

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

That Sort Of Reputation Which Precedes Performance [is] Often The Larger Part Of A Man's Fame.

What Moments Of Despair That Life Would Ever Be Made Precious To Me By The Consciousness That I Lived To Some Good Purpose! It Was That Sort Of Despair That Sucked Away The Sap Of Half The Hours Which Might Have Been Filled By Energetic Youthful Activity: And The Same Demon Tries To Get Hold Of Me Again Whenever An Old Work Is Dismissed And A New One Is Being Meditated.

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

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.

The Greatest Benefit We Owe To The Artist, Whether Painter, Poet, Or Novelist, Is The Extension Of Our Sympathies.

... 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.

Life Would Be No Better Than Candlelight Tinsel And Daylight Rubbish If Our Spirits Were Not Touched By What Has Been.

For Years After Lydgate Remembered The Impression Produced In Him By This Involuntary Appeal-this Cry From Soul To Soul, Without Other Consciousness Than Their Moving With Kindred Natures In The Same Embroiled Medium, The Same Troublous Fitfully-illuminated Life.

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

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

These Fellow-mortals, Every One, Must Be Accepted As They Are: You Can Neither Straighten Their Noses, Nor Brighten Their Wit, Nor Rectify Their Dispositions; And It Is These People-amongst Whom Your Life Is Passed-that It Is Needful You Should Tolerate, Pity, And Love: It Is These More Or Less Ugly, Stupid, Inconsistent People Whose Movements Of Goodness You Should Be Able To Admire-for Whom You Should Cherish All Possible Hopes, All Possible Patience.

We Are On A Perilous Margin When We Begin To Look Passively At Our Future Selves, And See Our Own Figures Led With Dull Consent Into Insipid Misdoing And Shabby Achievement.

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

It Is In These Acts Called Trivialities That The Seeds Of Joy Are Forever Wasted, Until Men And Women Look Round With Haggard Faces At The Devastation Their Own Waste Has Made, And Say, The Earth Bears No Harvest Of Sweetness - Calling Their Denial Knowledge.

Love At Its Highest Flood Rushes Beyond Its Object, And Loses Itself In The Sense Of Divine Mystery.

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

We Must Not Sit Still And Look For Miracles; Up And Doing, And The Lord Will Be With Thee. Prayer And Pains, Through Faith In Christ Jesus, Will Do Anything.

There Is No Sorrow I Have Thought More About Than That-to Love What Is Great, And Try To Reach It, And Yet To Fail.

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.

Women Should Be Protected From Anyone's Exercise Of Unrighteous Power... But Then, So Should Every Other Living Creature.

As To People Saying A Few Idle Words About Us, We Must Not Mind That, Any More Than The Old Church Steeple Minds The Rooks Cawing About 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.

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

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.

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.

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

How Is It That The Poets Have Said So Many Fine Things About Our First Love, So Few About Our Later Love? Are Their First Poems Their Best? Or Are Not Those The Best Which Come From Their Fuller Thought, Their Larger Experience, Their Deeper-rooted Affections? The Boy's Flute-like Voice Has Its Own Spring Charm; But The Man Should Yield A Richer, Deeper Music.

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

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

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

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