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So Much Of Our Early Gladness Vanishes Utterly From Our Memory: We Can Never Recall The Joy With Which We Laid Our Heads On Our Mother's Bosom Or Rode On Our Father's Back In Childhood; Doubtless That Joy Is Wrought Up Into Our Nature, As The Sunlight Of Long-past Mornings Is Wrought Up In The Soft Mellowness Of The Apricot; But It Is Gone Forever From Our Imagination, And We Can Only Believe In The Joy Of Childhood.

-George Eliot

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So Much Of Our

George Eliot

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So Much Of Our Early Gladness Vanishes Utterly From Our Memory: We Can Never Recall The Joy With Which We Laid Our Heads On Our Mother's Bosom Or Rode On Our Father's Back In Childhood; Doubtless That Joy Is Wrought Up Into Our Nature, As The Sunlight Of Long-past Mornings Is Wrought Up In The Soft Mellowness Of The Apricot; But It Is Gone Forever From Our Imagination, And We Can Only Believe In The Joy Of Childhood.

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No Man Is Matriculated To The Art Of Life Till He Has Been Well Tempted.

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

It Had Already Occurred To Him That Books Were Stuff, And That Life Was Stupid.

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I Am Influenced At The Present Time By Far Higher Considerations And By A Nobler Idea Of Duty Than I Ever Was When I Held The Evangelical Belief.

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

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We Are Led On, Like Little Children, By A Way We Know Not.

The First Condition Of Human Goodness Is Something To Love; The Second, Something To Reverence.

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Dark The Night, With Breath All Flowers, And Tender Broken Voice That Fills With Ravishment The Listening Hours,-- Whisperings, Wooings, Liquid Ripples, And Soft Ring-dove Cooings In Low-toned Rhythm That Love's Aching Stills! Dark The Night Yet Is She Bright, For In Her Dark She Brings The Mystic Star, Trembling Yet Strong, As Is The Voice Of Love, From Some Unknown Afar.

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A Good Horse Makes Short Miles.

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I Will To Make Life Less Bitter For A Few Within My Reach.

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All Meanings, We Know, Depend On The Key Of Interpretation.

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

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Things Are Achieved When They Are Well Begun. The Perfect Archer Calls The Deer His Own While Yet The Shaft Is Whistling.

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

No Story Is The Same To Us After A Lapse Of Time; Or Rather We Who Read It Are No Longer The Same Interpreters.

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

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The Beauty Of A Lovely Woman Is Like Music.

Among All Forms Of Mistake, Prophecy Is The Most Gratuitous.

Justice Is Like The Kingdom Of God--it Is Not Without Us As A Fact, It Is Within Us As A Great Yearning.

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

In High Vengeance There Is Noble Scorn.

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

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

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

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The Dew-bead Gem Of Earth And Sky Begotten.

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The Years Between Fifty And Seventy Are The Hardest. You Are Always Being Asked To Do Things, And Yet You Are Not Decrepit Enough To Turn Them Down.

Quick Souls Have Their Intensest Life In The First Anticipatory Sketch Of What May Or Will Be, And The Pursuit Of Their Wish Is The Pursuit Of That Paradisiacal Vision Which Only Impelled Them, And Is Left Farther And Farther Behind, Vanishing Forever Even Out Of Hope In The Moment Which Is Called Success.

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

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

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Love Supreme Defies All Sophistry.

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There Are Natures In Which, If They Love Us, We Are Conscious Of Having A Sort Of Baptism And Consecration.

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Joy Is The Best Of Wine.

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

A Woman Mixed Of Such Fine Elements That Were All Virtue And Religion Dead She'd Make Them Newly, Being What She Was.

... When One's Outward Lot Is Perfect, The Sense Of Inward Imperfection Is The More Pressing.

How Will You Find Good? It Is Not A Thing Of Choice; It Is A River That Flows From The Foot Of The Invisible Throne And Flows By The Path Of Obedience.

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

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

It Is A Wonderful Subduer, This Need Of Love-this Hunger Of The Heart-as Peremptory As That Other Hunger By Which Nature Forces Us To Submit To The Yoke, And Change The Face Of The World.

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.

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.

The Devil Tempts Us Not--'tis We Tempt Him, Reckoning His Skill With Opportunity.

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

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.

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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.

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I Flutter All Ways, And Fly In None.

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

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