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She Thought It Was Part Of The Hardship Of Her Life That There Was Laid Upon Her The Burthen Of Larger Wants Than Others Seemed To Feel – That She Had To Endure This Wide Hopeless Yearning For That Something, Whatever It Was, That Was Greatest And Best On This Earth.

-George Eliot

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She Thought It Was

George Eliot

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She Thought It Was Part Of The Hardship Of Her Life That There Was Laid Upon Her The Burthen Of Larger Wants Than Others Seemed To Feel – That She Had To Endure This Wide Hopeless Yearning For That Something, Whatever It Was, That Was Greatest And Best On This Earth.

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

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

Go Forward With Joyful Confidence.

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

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.

Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun.

We Are All Of Us Born In Moral Stupidity, Taking The World As An Udder To Feed Our Supreme Selves

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.

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

Blameless People Are Always The Most Exasperating.

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.

There's Good Chances And Bad Chances, And Nobody's Luck Is Pulled Only By One String.

When I Married Humphrey I Made Up My Mind To Like Sermons, And I Set Out By Liking The End Very Much. That Soon Spread To The Middle And The Beginning, Because I Couldn't Have The End Without Them.

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 . . .

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.

To Think Of The Part One Little Woman Can Play In The Life Of A Man, So That To Renounce Her May Be A Very Good Imitation Of Heroism, And To Win Her May Be A Discipline.

Those Only Can Thoroughly Feel The Meaning Of Death Who Know What Is Perfect Love.

We Reap What We Sow, But Nature Has Love Over And Above That Justice, And Gives Us Shadow And Blossom And Fruit, That Spring From No Planting Of Ours.

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

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.

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.

I Care Only To Know, If Possible, The Lasting Meaning That Lies In All Religious Doctrine From The Beginning Till Now.

Life Seems To Go On Without Effort When I Am Filled With Music.

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

Women Know No Perfect Love: Loving The Strong, They Can Forsake The Strong; Man Clings Because The Being Whom He Loves Is Weak And Needs Him.

Fine Old Christmas, With The Snowy Hair And Ruddy Face, Had Done His Duty That Year In The Noblest Fashion, And Had Set Off His Rich Gifts Of Warmth And Color With All The Heightening Contrast Of Frost And Snow.

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

Ignorance Gives One A Large Range Of Probabilities.

Boots And Shoes Are The Greatest Trouble Of My Life. Everything Else One Can Turn And Turn About, And Make Old Look Like New; But There's No Coaxing Boots And Shoes To Look Better Than They Are.

It Is A Sad Weakness In Us, After All, That The Thought Of A Person's Death Consecrates Him Or Her Anew To Us. It Is As If Life Were Not Sacred Too, As If It Were Comparatively A Small Thing To Fail In Love And Reverence To The Brother Or Sister Who Has To Climb The Whole Toilsome Mountain With Us. It Seems As If All Our Tears And Tenderness Were Due To The One Who Is Spared That Hard Journey.

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.

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

All Passion Becomes Strength When It Has An Outlet.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

Uncomfortable Thoughts Must Be Got Rid Of By Good Intentions For The Future.

Good Intentions

An Ass May Bray A Good While Before He Shakes The Stars Down.

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

Failure After Long Perseverance Is Much Grander Than Never To Have A Striving Good Enough To Be Called A Failure.

Nature Has The Deep Cunning Which Hides Itself Under The Appearance Of Openness, So That Simple People Think They Can See Through Her Quite Well, And All The While She Is Secretly Preparing A Refutation Of Their Confident Prophecies.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Seldom That The Miserable Can Help Regarding Their Misery As A Wrong Inflicted By Those Who Are Less Miserable.

Nature Has Her Language, And She Is Not Unveracious; But We Don't Know All The Intricacies Of Her Syntax Just Yet, And In A Hasty Reading We May Happen To Extract The Very Opposite Of Her Real Meaning.

The Important Work Of Moving The World Forward Does Not Wait To Be Done By Perfect Men.

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.

The Yoke A Man Creates For Himself By Wrong-doing Will Breed Hate In The Kindliest Nature.

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 Nothing That Will Kill A Man So Soon As Having Nobody To Find Fault With But Himself.

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

What Loneliness Is More Lonely Than Distrust?

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

... 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.

Having Once Embarked On Your Marital Voyage, It Is Impossible Not To Be Aware That You Make No Way And The Sea Is Not Within Sight; That In Fact, You Are Exploring An Enclosed Basin.

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.

Among The Blessings Of Love There Is Hardly One More Exquisite Than The Sense That In Uniting The Beloved Life To Ours We Can Watch Over Its Happiness, Bring Comfort Where Hardship Was, And Over Memories Of Privation And Suffering Open The Sweetest Fountains Of Joy.

I Think Cheerfulness Is A Fortune In Itself.

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.

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.

In Certain Crises Direct Expression Of Sympathy Is The Least Possible To Those Who Most Feel Sympathy.

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us.

A Good Solid Bit Of Work Lasts.

Destiny Stands By Sarcastic With Our Dramatis Personae Folded In Her Hand.

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

Perhaps The Most Delightful Friendships Are Those In Which There Is Much Agreement, Much Disputation, And Yet More Personal Liking.

All Writing Seems To Me Worse In The State Of Proof Than In Any Other Form. In Manuscript One's Own Wisdom Is Rather Remarkable To One, But In Proof It Has The Effect Of One's Private Furniture Repeated In The Shop Windows. And Then There Is The Sense That The Worst Errors Will Go To Press Unnoticed!

Those Bitter Sorrows Of Childhood!-- When Sorrow Is All New And Strange, When Hope Has Not Yet Got Wings To Fly Beyond The Days And Weeks, And The Space From Summer To Summer Seems Measureless.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

There Is No Hour That Has Not Its Births Of Gladness And Despair, No Morning Brightness That Does Not Bring New Sickness To Desolation As Well As New Forces To Genius And Love. There Are So Many Of Us, And Our Lots Are So Different, What Wonder That Nature's Mood Is Often In Harsh Contrast With The Great Crisis Of Our Lives?

When We Get To Wishing A Great Deal For Ourselves, Whatever We Get Soon Turns Into Mere Limitation And Exclusion.

It Is Better Sometimes Not To Follow Great Reformers Of Abuses Beyond The Threshold Of Their Homes.

Hear Everything And Judge For Yourself

Hurt, He'll Never Be Hurt--he's Made To Hurt Other People.

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.

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.

Any Coward Can Fight A Battle When He's Sure Of Winning.

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

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

It Is Well Known To All Experienced Minds That Our Firmest Convictions Are Often Dependent On Subtle Impressions For Which Words Are Quite Too Coarse A Medium.

Conscientious People Are Apt To See Their Duty In That Which Is The Most Painful Course.

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

History, We Know, Is Apt To Repeat Itself.

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.

For What Is Love Itself, For The One We Love Best? An Enfolding Of Immeasurable Cares Which Yet Are Better Than Any Joys Outside Our Love.

The Desire To Conquer Is Itself A Sort Of Subjection.

What Deep And Worthy Love Is So, Whether Of Woman Or Child, Or Art Or Music. Our Caresses, Our Tender Words, Our Still Rapture Under The Influence Of Autumn Sunsets, Or Pillared Vistas, Or Calm Majestic Statues, Or Beethoven Symphonies All Bring With Them The Consciousness That They Are Mere Waves And Ripples In An Unfathomable Ocean Of Love And Beauty; Our Emotion In Its Keenest Moment Passes From Expression Into Silence, Our Love At Its Highest Flood Rushes Beyond Its Object And Loses Itself In The Sense Of Divine Mystery.

If I Have Read Religious History Aright, Faith, Hope, And Charity Have Not Always Been Found In A Direct Ratio With A Sensibility To The Three Concords; And It Is Possible, Thank Heaven! To Have Very Erroneous Theories And Very Sublime Feelings.

Would Not Love See Returning Penitence Afar Off, And Fall On Its Neck And Kiss It?

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

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.

... 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.

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

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

Her Own Misery Filled Her Heart—there Was No Room In It For Other People's Sorrow.

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

A Fine Lady Is A Squirrel-headed Thing, With Small Airs And Small Notions; About As Applicable To The Business Of Life As A Pair Of Tweezers To The Clearing Of A Forest.

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.

One Can Begin So Many Things With A New Person! - Even Begin To Be A Better Man.

Finding Yourself

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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; Whereas Ignorance Is A Blind Giant Who, Let Him But Wax Unbound, Would Make It A Sport To Seize The Pillars That Hold Up The Long-wrought Fabric Of Human Good, And Turn All The Places Of Joy As Dark As A Buried Babylon.

O The Anguish Of The Thought That We Can Never Atone To Our Dead For The Stinted Affection We Gave Them.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Genius Is The Capacity For Receiving And Improving By Discipline.

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

No One Who Has Ever Known What It Is To Lose Faith In A Fellow-man Whom He Has Profoundly Loved And Reverenced, Will Lightly Say That The Shock Can Leave The Faith In The Invisible Goodness Unshaken. With The Sinking Of High Human Trust, The Dignity Of Life Sinks Too; We Cease To Believe In Our Own Better Self, Since That Also Is Part Of The Common Nature Which Is Degraded In Our Thought; And All The Finer Impulses Of The Soul Are Dulled.

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.

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

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

Yes, Isaac Taylor, Who Has Just Published 'the World Of Mind,' Is The Isaac Taylor, Author Of The 'natural History Of Enthusiasm.' I Dare Say By This Time There Is A Want Of Fatty Particles In His Brain.

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.

The Mind That Is Too Ready At Contempt And Reprobation Is, I May Say, As A Clenched Fist That Can Give Blows, But Is Shut Up From Receiving And Holding Ought That Is Precious.

The Egoism Which Enters Into Our Theories Does Not Affect Their Sincerity; Rather, The More Our Egoism Is Satisfied, The More Robust Is Our Belief.

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.

Unhappily The Habit Of Being Offensive 'without Meaning It' Leads Usually To A Way Of Making Amends Which The Injured Person Cannot But Regard As A Being Amiable Without Meaning It.

Blessed Is The Influence Of One True, Loving Human Soul On Another.

He Who Rules Must Fully Humor As Much As He Commands.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

One Way Of Getting An Idea Of Our Fellow-countrymen's Miseries Is To Go And Look At Their Pleasures.

Letter-writing I Imagine Is Counted As 'work' From Which You Must Abstain, And I Scribble This Letter Simply From The Self-satisfied Notion That You Will Like To Hear From Me. You See, I Have Asked No Questions, Which Are The Torture-screws Of Correspondence. Hence You Have Nothing To Answer.

He Had The Superficial Kindness Of A Good-humored, Self-satisfied Nature, That Fears No Rivalry, And Has Encountered No Contrarieties.

But What We Strive To Gratify, Though We May Call It A Distant Hope, Is An Immediate Desire; The Future Estate For Which Men Drudge Up City Alleys Exists Already In Their Imagination And Love.

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

The Sons Of Judah Have To Choose That God May Again Choose Them. The Divine Principle Of Our Race Is Action, Choice, Resolved Memory.

Only Those Who Know The Supremacy Of The Intellectual Life──the Life Which Has A Seed Of Ennobling Thought And Purpose Within──can Understand The Grief Of One Who Falls From That Serene Activity Into The Absorbing Soul-wasting Struggle With Worldly Annoyances.

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.

Our Deeds Are Fetters That We Forge Ourselves.

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

But 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.

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

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

Adventure Is Not Outside Man; It Is Within.

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.

Falsehood Is Easy, Truth So Difficult.

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.

Surely There Was Something Taught Her By This Experience Of Great Need; And She Must Be Learning A Secret Of Human Tenderness And Long-suffering, That The Less Erring Could Hardly Know?

Don't Seem To He On The Lookout For Crows, Else You'll Set Other People Watching.

It Is A Wonderful Subduer-this Need Of Love, This Hunger Of The Heart.

I Would Not Creep Along The Coast But Steer Out In Mid-sea, By Guidance Of The Stars.

If You Had A Table Spread For A Feast, And Was Making Merry With Your Friends, You Would Think It Was Kind To Let Me Come And Sit Down And Rejoice With You, Because You'd Think I Should To Share Those Good Things; But I Should Better To Share In Your Trouble And Your Labour.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Say "i Love You" To Those You Love. The Eternal Silence Is Long Enough To Be Silent In, And That Awaits Us All.

Worldly Faces Never Look So Worldly As At A Funeral.

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.

I Take A Dose Of Mathematics Every Day To Prevent My Brain From Becoming Quite Soft.

It Must Be Sad To Outlive Aught We Love.

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

Where You Have Friends You Should Not Go To Inns.

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.

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

Opposition May Become Sweet To A Man When He Has Christened It Persecution.

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

So Deeply Inherent Is It In This Life Of Ours That Men Have To Suffer For Each Other's Sins, So Inevitably Diffusive Is Human Suffering, That Even Justice Makes Its Victims, And We Can Conceive No Retribution That Does Not Spread Beyond Its Mark In Pulsations Of Unmerited Pain.

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

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

Boots And Shoes Are The Greatest Trouble Of My Life.

I Know Forgiveness Is A Man's Duty, But, To My Thinking, That Can Only Mean As You're To Give Up All Thoughts O' Taking Revenge: It Can Never Mean As You're T' Have Your Old Feelings Back Again, For That's Not Possible.

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

Our Sense Of Duty Must Often Wait For Some Work Which Shall Take The Place Of Dilettanteism [sic] And Make Us Feel That The Quality Of Our Action Is Not A Matter Of Indifference.

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.

There Are Various Orders Of Beauty, Causing Men To Make Fools Of Themselves In Various Styles.

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.

There Is A Chill Air Surrounding Those Who Are Down In The World, And People Are Glad To Get Away From Them, As From A Cold Room.

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

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.

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

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William Peter Blatty

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