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

-George Eliot

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It Is Not Ignoble

George Eliot

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

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This Is A Puzzling World, And Old Harry's Got A Finger In It.

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.

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.

Souls Live On In Perpetual Echoes.

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

There Are Two Ways Of Speaking An Audience Will Always Like: One Is, To Tell Them What They Don't Understand; And The Other Is, To Tell Them What They're Used To.

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

What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Cant Use It?

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.

What Sunshine Is To Flowers, Smiles Are To Humanity.

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.

Society Never Made The Preposterous Demand That A Man Should Think As Much About His Own Qualifications For Making A Charming Girl Happy As He Thinks Of Hers For Making Himself Happy.

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.

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.

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

Those Old Stories Of Visions And Dreams Guiding Men Have Their Truth; We Are Saved By Making The Future Present To Ourselves.

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.

Our Deeds Are Like Children That Are Born To Us; They Live And Act Apart From Our Own Will. Nay, Children May Be Strangled, But Deeds Never: They Have An Indestructible Life Both In And Out Of Our Consciousness.

I'm Proof Against That Word Failure. I've Seen Behind It. The Only Failure A Man Ought To Fear Is Failure Of Cleaving To The Purpose He Sees To Be Best.

I Think I Should Have No Other Mortal Wants, If I Could Always Have Plenty Of Music.

Fear Was Stronger Than The Calculation Of Probabilities.

We Have All Our Secret Sins; And If We Knew Ourselves We Should Not Judge Each Other Harshly.

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

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

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.

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

I Have The Conviction That Excessive Literary Production Is A Social Offence.

Expenditure--like Ugliness And Errors--becomes A Totally New Thing When We Attach Our Own Personality To It, And Measure It By That Wide Difference Which Is Manifest (in Our Own Sensations) Between Ourselves And Others.

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

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

The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music.

Here Undoubtedly Lies The Chief Poetic Energy: - In The Force Of Imagination That Pierces Or Exalts The Solid Fact, Instead Of Floating Among Cloud-pictures.

Effective Magic Is Transcendent Nature.

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

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

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.

There Are Men Whose Presence Infuses Trust And Reverence.

What Business Has An Old Bachelor Like That To Marry?' Said Sir James. 'he Has One Foot In The Grave.' 'he Means To Draw It Out Again, I Suppose.

In All Private Quarrels The Duller Nature Is Triumphant By Reason Of Dullness.

How Could A Man Be Satisfied With A Decision Between Such Alternatives And Under Such Circumstances No More Than He Can Be Satisfied With His Hat, Which He's Chosen From Among Such Shapes As The Resources Of The Age Offer Him. . . .

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

Whatever Be Thy Fate Today, Remember, This Will Pass Away!

Half The Sorrows Of Women Would Be Averted If They Could Repress The Speech They Know To Be Useless-nay, The Speech They Have Resolved Not To Utter.

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.

... 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.

... 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.

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 . . .

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

What A Different Result One Gets By Changing The Metaphor!

What People Do Who Go Into Politics I Can't Think; It Drives Me Almost Mad To See Mismanagement Over Only A Few Hundred Acres.

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

... 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.

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

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

To The Receptive Soul The River Of Life Pauseth Not, Nor Is Diminished.

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

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

The Bow Always Strung ... Will Not Do.

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

I'd Sooner Have One Real Grief On My Mind Than Twenty False. It's Better To Know One's Robbed Than To Think One's Going To Be Murdered.

Delicious Autumn! My Very Soul Is Wedded To It.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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There Are Many Victories Worse Than A Defeat.

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As Soon As We Lay Ourselves Entirely At His Feet, We Have Enough Light Given Us To Guide Our Own Steps; As The Foot-soldier Who Hears Nothing Of The Councils That Determine The Course Of The Great Battle He Is In, Hears Plainly Enough The Word Of Command That They Must Themselves Obey.

...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.

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.

The Rich Ate And Drank Freely, Accepting Gout And Apoplexy As Things That Ran Mysteriously In Respectable Families.

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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.

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There Are But Two Sorts Of Government: One Where Men Show Their Teeth At Each Other, And One Where Men Show Their Tongues And Lick The Feet Of The Strongest.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Mighty Is The Force Of Motherhood! It Transforms All Things By Its Vital Heat; It Turns Timidity Into Fierce Courage, And Dreadless Defiance Into Tremulous Submission; It Turns Thoughtlessness Into Foresight, And Yet Stills All Anxiety Into Calm Content; It Makes Selfishness Become Self-denial, And Gives Even To Hard Vanity The Glance Of Admiring Love.

There Is A Sort Of Jealousy Which Needs Very Little Fire; It Is Hardly A Passion, But A Blight Bred In The Cloudy, Damp Despondency Of Uneasy Egoism.

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.

For We All Of Us, Grave Or Light, Get Our Thoughts Entangled In Metaphors, And Act Fatally On The Strength Of Them.

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

What Courage And Patience Are Wanted For Every Life That Aims To Produce Anything!

In Bed Our Yesterdays Are Too Oppressive: If A Man Can Only Get Up, Though It Be But To Whistle Or To Smoke, He Has A Present Which Offers Some Resistance To The Past—sensations Which Assert Themselves Against Tyrannous Memories.

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.

Education Is An Asset No Man Can Take Away.

Breed Is Stronger Than Pasture.

But Certain Winds Will Make Men's Temper Bad.

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

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

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

We Cannot Reform Our Forefathers.

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

It Always Remains True That If We Had Been Greater, Circumstance Would Have Been Less Strong Against Us.

Try To Take Hold Of Your Sensibility, And Use It As If It Were A Faculty, Like Vision.

But Most Of Us Are Apt To Settle Within Ourselves That The Man Who Blocks Our Way Is Odious, And Not To Mind Causing Him A Little Of The Disgust Which His Personality Excites In Ourselves.

I Had Some Ambition. I Meant Everything To Be Different With Me. I Thought I Had More Strength And Mastery. But The Most Terrible Obstacles Are Such As Nobody Can See Except Oneself.

But Very Little Achievement Is Required In Order To Pity Another Man's Shortcomings.

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.

What Destroys Us Most Effectively Is Not A Malign Fate But Our Own Capacity For Self-deception And For Degrading Our Own Best Self.

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

New Experiences

The Wrong That Rouses Our Angry Passions Finds Only A Medium In Us; It Passes Through Us Like A Vibration, And We Inflict What We Have Suffered.

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

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

Beautiful Women

My Own Experience And Development Deepen Every Day My Conviction That Our Moral Progress May Be Measured By The Degree In Which We Sympathize With Individual Suffering And Individual Joy.

What Greater Thing Is There For Two Human Souls Than To Feel That They Are Joined - To Strengthen Each Other - To Be At One With Each Other In Silent Unspeakable Memories.

To An Old Memory Like Mine The Present Days Are But As A Little Water Poured On The Deep.

Doubtless A Great Anguish May Do The Work Of Years, And We May Come Out From That Baptism Of Fire With A Soul Full Of New Awe And New Pity.

Receptiveness Is A Rare And Massive Power, Like Fortitude.

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

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

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.

We Have All Got To Exert Ourselves A Little To Keep Sane, And Call Things By The Same Names As Other People Call Them By.

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.

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.

I Don't See How A Man Is To Be Good For Much Unless He Has Some One Woman To Love Him Dearly.

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

Religion, Like All Things, Begins With Self, And Naught Is Known, Until One Knows Himself.

A Proud Heart And A Lofty Mountain Are Never Fruitful.

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.

Some Gentlemen Have Made An Amazing Figure In Literature By General Discontent With The Universe As A Trap Of Dulness Into Which Their Great Souls Have Fallen By Mistake; But The Sense Of A Stupendous Self And An Insignificant World May Have Its Consolations. Lydgate's Discontent Was Much Harder To Bear; It Was The Sense That There Was A Grand Existence In Thought And Effective Action Lying Around Him, While His Self Was Being Narrowed Into The Miserable Isolation Of Egoistic Fears, And Vulgar Anxieties For Events That Might Allay Such Fears.

Surely It Is Not True Blessedness To Be Free Of Sorrow While There Is Sorrow And Sin In The World. Sorrow Is A Part Of Love And Love Does Not Seek To Throw It Off.

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

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.

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

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

Truth Has Rough Flavours If We Bite It Through.

I Suppose It Was That In Courtship Everything Is Regarded As Provisional And Preliminary, And The Smallest Sample Of Virtue Or Accomplishment Is Taken To Guarantee Delightful Stores Which The Broad Leisure Of Marriage Will Reveal. But The Door-sill Of Marriage Once Crossed, Expectation Is Concentrated On The Present. Having Once Embarked On Your Marital Voyage, It Is Impossible Not To Be Aware That You Make No Way And That The Sea Is Not Within Sight-that, In Fact, You Are Exploring An Enclosed Basin.

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.

When One Is Grateful For Something Too Good For Common Thanks, Writing Is Less Unsatisfactory Than Speech-one Does Not, At Least, Hear How Inadequate The Words Are.

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.

A Mother's Yearning Feels The Presence Of The Cherished Child Even In The Degraded Man.

When Death, The Great Reconciler, Has Come, It Is Never Our Tenderness That We Repent Of, But Our Severity.

Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

It Is Never Too Late To Be Who You Want To Be.

Those Who Have Been Indulged By Fortune And Have Always Thought Of Calamity As What Happens To Others, Feel A Blind Incredulous Rage At The Reversal Of Their Lot, And Half Believe That Their Wild Cries Will Alter The Course Of The Storm.

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

We Are All Of Us Imaginative In Some Form Or Other, For Images Are The Brood Of Desire.

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.

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

Errors Look So Very Ugly In Persons Of Small Means -one Feels They Are Taking Quite A Liberty In Going Astray; Whereas People Of Fortune May Naturally Indulge In A Few Delinquencies.

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.

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.

I Flutter All Ways, And Fly In None.

What Is Better Than To Love And Live With The Loved? -- But That Must Sometimes Bring Us To Live With The Dead; And This Too Turns At Last Into A Very Tranquil And Sweet Tie, Safe From Change And Injury.

Oh, 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.

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

There 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.

I Don't Mind How Many Letters I Receive From One Who Interests Me As Much As You Do. The Receptive Part Of Correspondence I Can Carry On With Much Alacrity. It Is Writing Answers That I Groan Over.

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.

There Is No General Doctrine Which Is Not Capable Of Eating Out Our Morality If Unchecked By The Deep-seated Habit Of Direct Fellow-feeling With Individual Fellow-men.

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.

Sir Joshua Would Have Been Glad To Take Her Portrait; And He Would Have Had An Easier Task Than The Historian At Least In This, That He Would Not Have Had To Represent The Truth Of Change - Only To Give Stability To One Beautiful Moment.

Our Deeds Are Fetters That We Forge Ourselves.

A Human Being In This Aged Nation Of Ours Is A Very Wonderful Hole, The Slow Creation Of Long Interchanging Influences; And Charm Is A Result Of Two Such Wholes, The One Loving And The One Loved.

The Scornful Nostril And The High Head Gather Not The Odors That Lie On The Track Of Truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Every Limit Is A Beginning As Well As An Ending.

There Are Answers Which, In Turning Away Wrath, Only Send It To The Other End Of The Room, And To Have A Discussion Coolly Waived When You Feel That Justice Is All On Your Own Side Is Even More Exasperating In Marriage Than In Philosophy.

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.

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.

Shall We, Because We Walk On Our Hind Feet, Assume To Ourselves Only The Privilege Of Imperishability?

Brothers Are So Unpleasant.

It Is A Narrow Mind Which Cannot Look At A Subject From Various Points Of View.

Vanity Is As Ill At Ease Under Indifference As Tenderness Is Under A Love Which It Cannot Return.

When A Workman Knows The Use Of His Tools, He Can Make A Door As Well As A Window.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Think I Am Quite Wicked With Roses. I Like To Gather Them, And Smell Them Till They Have No Scent Left.

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.

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Gael Garcia Bernal

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