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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.

-George Eliot

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Marriage Is So Unlike

George Eliot

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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.

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The Desire To Conquer Is Itself A Sort Of Subjection.

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

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The Floods Of Nonsense Printed In The Form Of Critical Opinions Seem To Me A Chief Curse Of The Times, A Chief Obstacle To True Culture.

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

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

More Helpful Than All Wisdom Is One Draught Of Simple Human Pity That Will Not Forsake Us.

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.

There Are Men Whose Presence Infuses Trust And Reverence.

There Was No Gleam, No Shadow, For The Heavens, Too, Were One Still, Pale Cloud; No Sound Or Motion In Anything But The Dark River That Flowed And Moaned Like An Unresting Sorrow.

Teach Love, For That Is What You Are.

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

Who Has Not Felt The Beauty Of A Woman's Arm? The Unspeakable Suggestions Of Tenderness That Lie In The Dimpled Elbow, And All The Varied Gently-lessening Curves, Down To The Delicate Wrist, With Its Tiniest, Almost Imperceptible Nicks In The Firm Softness.

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. No Man Can Begin To Mould Himself On A Faith Or An Idea Without Rising To A Higher Order Of Experience: A Principle Of Subordination, Of Self-mastery, Has Been Introduced Into His Nature; He Is No Longer A Mere Bundle Of Impressions, Desires, And Impulses.

It's No Use Filling Your Pocket With Money If You Have Got A Hole In The Corner.

Great Love Has Many Attributes, And Shrines For Varied Worshippers, But His Force Divine Shows Most Its Many-named Fulness In The Man Whose Nature Multitudinously Mixed-- Each Ardent Impulse Grappling With A Thought-- Resists All Easy Gladness, All Content Save Mystic Rapture, Where The Questioning Soul Flooded With Consciousness Of Good That Is Finds Life One Bounteous Answer.

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

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.

The World Is Full Of Hopeful Analogies And Handsome, Dubious Eggs, Called Possibilities.

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.

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.

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

If The Past Is Not To Bind Us, Where Can Duty Lie? We Should Have No Law But The Inclination Of The Moment.

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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.

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.

It Is Time The Clergy Are Told That Thinking Men, After A Close Examination Of That Doctrine, Pronounce It To Be Subversive Of True Moral Development And, Therefore, Positively Noxious.

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

Solomon's Proverbs, I Think, Have Omitted To Say, That As The Sore Palate Findeth Grit, So An Uneasy Consciousness Heareth Innuendos.

Friendship Is The Inexpressible Comfort Of Feeling Safe With A Person, Having Neither To Weigh Thoughts Nor Measure Words.

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

Life Is Too Precious To Be Spent In This Weaving And Unweaving Of False Impressions, And It Is Better To Live Quietly Under Some Degree Of Misrepresentation Than To Attempt To Remove It By The Uncertain Process Of Letter-writing.

If We Only Look Far Enough Off For The Consequence Of Our Actions, We Can Always Find Some Point In The Combination Of Results By Which Those Actions Can Be Justified: By Adopting The Point Of View Of A Providence Who Arranges Results, Or Of A Philosopher Who Traces Them, We Shall Find It Possible To Obtain Perfect Complacency In Choosing To Do What Is Most Agreeable To Us In The Present Moment.

I At Least Have So Much To Do In Unraveling Certain Human Lots, And Seeing How They Were Woven And Interwoven, That All The Light I Can Command Must Be Concentrated On This Particular Web, And Not Dispersed Over That Tempting Range Of Relevancies Called The Universe.

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

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.

Blows Are Sarcasms Turned Stupid.

Poor Dog! I've A Strange Feeling About The Dumb Things As If They Wanted To Speak, And It Was A Trouble To 'em Because They Couldn't. I Can't Help Being Sorry For The Dogs Always, Though Perhaps There's No Need. But They May Well Have More In Them Than They Know How To Make Us Understand, For We Can't Say Half What We Feel, With All Our Words.

It Is Difficult For Woman To Try To Be Anything Good When She Is Not Believed In.

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Geraldine Brooks

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