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When The Soul Is Just Liberated From The Wretched Giant's Bed Of Dogmas On Which It Has Been Racked And Stretched Ever Since It Began To Think, There Is A Feeling Of Exultation And Strong Hope.

-George Eliot

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When The Soul Is

George Eliot

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When The Soul Is Just Liberated From The Wretched Giant's Bed Of Dogmas On Which It Has Been Racked And Stretched Ever Since It Began To Think, There Is A Feeling Of Exultation And Strong Hope.

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

Strange, That Some Of Us, With Quick Alternate Vision, See Beyond Our Infatuations, And Even While We Rave On The Heights, Behold The Wide Plain Where Our Persistent Self Pauses And Awaits Us.

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

Susceptible Persons Are More Affected By A Change Of Tone That By Unexpected Words.

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

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

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.

Adventure Is Not Outside Man; It Is Within.

There Is A Great Deal Of Unmapped Country Within Us.

Genius ... Is Necessarily Intolerant Of Fetters.

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 Are Many Victories Worse Than A Defeat.

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.

We Get A Deal O' Useless Things About Us, Only Because We've Got The Money To Spend.

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.

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.

We Are Apt To Think It The Finest Era Of The World When America Was Beginning To Be Discovered, When A Bold Sailor, Even If He Were Wrecked, Might Alight On A New Kingdom.

You Must Love Your Work And Not Always Be Looking Over The Edge Of It Wanting Your Play To Begin.

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.

Of New Acquaintances One Can Never Be Sure Because One Likes Them One Day That It Will Be So The Next. Of Old Friends One Is Sure That It Will Be The Same Yesterday, Today, And Forever.

Blameless People Are Always The Most Exasperating.

Human Feeling Is Like The Mighty Rivers That Bless The Earth: It Does Not Wait For Beauty — It Flows With Resistless Force And Brings Beauty With It.

For Character Too Is A Process And An Unfolding. . . Among Our Valued Friends Is There Not Someone Or Other Who Is A Little Too Self Confident And Disdainful. . . .

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.

I Shall Never Love Anybody. I Can't Love People. I Hate Them.' 'the Time Will Come, Dear, The Time Will Come.

... Indefinite Visions Of Ambition Are Weak Against The Ease Of Doing What Is Habitual Or Beguilingly Agreeable.

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

Magnifying Glass

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.

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.

Life Is Like Our Game At Whist ... I Don't Enjoy The Game Much, But I Like To Play My Cards Well, And See What Will Be The End Of It.

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.

The Moment Of Finding A Fellow-creature Is Often As Full Of Mingled Doubt And Exultation, As The Moment Of Finding An Idea.

I Would Rather Not Be Engaged. When People Are Engaged, They Begin To Think Of Being Married Soon, And I Should Like Everything To Go On For A Long While Just As It Is.

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

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

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

But Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical, That Means Incongruous With The Phrases Of Current Talk Or Even Current Philosophy.

Many An Inherited Sorrow That Has Marred A Life Has Been Breathed Into No Human Ear.

But The Effect Of Her Being On Those Around Her Was Incalculably Diffusive: For The Growing Good Of The World Is Partly Dependent On Unhistoric Acts; And That Things Are Not So Ill With You And Me As They Might Have Been, Is Half Owing To The Number Who Lived Faithfully A Hidden Life, And Rest In Unvisited Tombs.

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?

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

In Our Spring-time Every Day Has Its Hidden Growths In The Mind, As It Has In The Earth When The Little Folded Blades Are Getting Ready To Pierce The Ground.

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

The Vainest Woman Is Never Thoroughly Conscious Of Her Beauty Till She Is Loved By The Man Who Sets Her Own Passion Vibrating In Return.

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

Truth Has Rough Flavours If We Bite It Through.

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

When We Are Dead : It Is The Living Only Who Cannot Be Forgiven The Living Only From Whom Men's Indulgence And Reverence Are Held Off, Like The Rain By The Hard East Wind .

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

Human Experience Is Usually Paradoxical.

Human Experience

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

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.

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

It Is Very Hard To Say The Exact Truth, Even About Your Own Immediate Feelings – Much Harder Than To Say Something Fine About Them Which Is Not The Exact Truth.

The Worst Of All Hobbies Are Those That People Think They Can Get Money At. They Shoot Their Money Down Like Corn Out Of A Sack Then.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

Finding Yourself

I Wish Always To Be Quoted As George Eliot.

The Men Are Mostly So Slow, Their Thoughts Overrun 'em, An' They Can Only Catch 'em By The Tail. I Can Count A Stocking-top While A Man's Getting's Tongue Ready; An' When He Outs Wi' His Speech At Last, There's Little Broth To Be Made On't. It's Your Dead Chicks Take The Longest Hatchin'.

The Jews Are Among The Aristocracy Of Every Land; If A Literature Is Called Rich In The Possession Of A Few Classic Tragedies, What Shall We Say To A National Tragedy Lasting For Fifteen Hundred Years, In Which The Poets And The Actors Were Also The Heroes.

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?

Vague Memories Hang About The Mind Like Cobwebs.

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 Best Fire Doesna Flare Up The Soonest.

But Indefinite Visions Of Ambition Are Weak Against The Ease Of Doing What Is Habitual Or Beguilingly Agreeable; And We All Know The Difficulty Of Carrying Out A Resolve When We Secretly Long That It May Turn Out To Be Unnecessary. In Such States Of Mind The Most Incredulous Person Has A Private Leaning Towards Miracle: Impossible To Conceive How Our Wish Could Be Fulfilled, Still - Very Wonderful Things Have Happened!

I Should Like To Know What Is The Proper Function Of Women, If It Is Not To Make Reasons For Husbands To Stay At Home, And Still Stronger Reasons For Bachelors To Go Out.

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.

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

There Is No Short-cut No Patent Tram-road, To Wisdom. After All The Centuries Of Invention, The Soul's Path Lies Through The Thorny Wilderness Which Must Still Be Trodden In Solitude, With Bleeding Feet, With Sobs For Help, As It Was Trodden By Them Of Old Time.

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.

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

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.

Wise Books For Half The Truths They Hold Are Honored Tombs.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Pity That Consequences Are Determined Not By Excuses But By Actions!

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Beginning Of Hardship Is Like The First Taste Of Bitter Food--it Seems For A Moment Unbearable; Yet, If There Is Nothing Else To Satisfy Our Hunger, We Take Another Bite And Find It Possible To Go On.

The Wit Of A Family Is Usually Best Received Among Strangers.

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

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

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

Signs Are Small Measurable Things, But Interpretations Are Illimitable, And In Girls Of Sweet, Ardent Nature, Every Sign Is Apt To Conjure Up Wonder, Hope, Belief, Vast As A Sky, And Colored By A Thimbleful Of Matter In The Shape Of Knowledge....wrong Reasoning Sometimes Lands Poor Mortals In Right Conclusions: 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. Just Because Miss Brooke Was Hasty In Her Trust, It Is Not Therefore Clear That Mr. Casaubon Was Unworthy Of It.

The Commonest Man, Who Has His Ounce Of Sense And Feeling, Is Conscious Of The Difference Between A Lovely, Delicate Woman And A Coarse One. Even A Dog Feels A Difference In Her Presence.

Our Impartiality Is Kept For Abstract Merit And Demerit, Which None Of Us Ever Saw.

Men Outlive Their Love, But They Don’t Outlive The Consequences Of Their Recklessness.

It Is Not True That Love Makes All Things Easy; It Makes Us Choose What Is Difficult.

Ah! But The Moods Lie In His Nature, My Boy, Just As Much As His Reflections Did, And More. A Man Can Never Do Anything At Variance With His Own Nature. He Carries Within Him The Germ Of His Most Exceptional Action; And If We Wise People Make Eminent Fools Of Ourselves On Any Particular Occasion, We Must Endure The Legitimate Conclusion That We Carry A Few Grains Of Folly To Our Ounce Of Wisdom.

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. Knowledge, Through Patient And Frugal Centuries, Enlarges Discovery And Makes Record Of It; Ignorance, Wanting Its Day's Dinner, Lights A Fire With The Record, And Gives A Flavour To Its One Roast With The Burnt Souls Of Many Generations.

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.

It Is Surely Better To Pardon Too Much, Than To Condemn Too Much.

Jews Are Not Fit For Heaven, But On Earth They Are Most Useful.

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

The Thing We Look Forward To Often Comes To Pass, But Never Precisely In The Way We Have Imagined To Ourselves.

To Be Candid, In Middlemarch Phraseology, Meant, To Use An Early Opportunity Of Letting Your Friends Know That You Did Not Take A Cheerful View Of Their Capacity, Their Conduct, Or Their Position; And A Robust Candor Never Waited To Be Asked For Its Opinion.

We Look At The One Little Woman's Face We Love, As We Look At The Face Of Our Mother Earth, And See All Sorts Of Answers To Our Own Yearnings.

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

That Is The Bitterest Of All,--to Wear The Yoke Of Our Own Wrong-doing.

With Memory Set Smarting Like A Reopened Wound, A Man's Past Is Not Simply A Dead History, An Outworn Preparation Of The Present: It Is Not A Repented Error Shaken Loose From The Life: It Is A Still Quivering Part Of Himself, Bringing Shudders And Bitter Flavors And The Tinglings Of A Merited Shame.

What If My Words Were Meant For Deeds.

Our Growing Thought Makes Growing Revelation.

Memory, When Duly Impregnated With Ascertained Facts, Is Sometimes Surprisingly Fertile.

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.

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

I Like Trying To Get Pregnant. I'm Not So Sure About Childbirth.

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

People Who Write Finely Must Not Expect To Be Left In Repose; They Will Be Molested With Thanks, At Least.

Impatient People, According To Bacon, Are Like The Bees, And Kill Themselves In Stinging Others.

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!

Some Folks' Tongues Are Like The Clocks As Run On Strikin', Not To Tell You The Time O' The Day, But Because There's Summat Wrong I' Their Own Inside.

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.

"abroad," That Large Home Of Ruined Reputations.

Family Likeness Has Often A Deep Sadness In It.

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.

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.

Steady Work Turns Genius To A Loom.

Life Began With Waking Up And Loving My Mother's Face.

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

Correct English Is The Slang Of Prigs.

There Are Men Whose Presence Infuses Trust And Reverence.

You Must Learn To Deal With The Odd And Even In Life, As Well As In Figures.

Beauty Is Part Of The Finished Language By Which Goodness Speaks.

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.

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.

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

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.

Affection Is The Broadest Basis Of A Good Life.

Might, Could, Would - They Are Contemptible Auxiliaries.

Positive Thinking

But What Is Opportunity To The Man Who Can't Use It?

[it Is Easier] To Quell Emotion Than To Incur The Consequences Of Venting It.

Things Don't Happen Because They're Bad Or Good, Else All Eggs Would Be Addled Or None At All, And At The Most It Is But Six To The Dozen. There's Good Chances And Bad Chances, And Nobody's Luck Is Pulled Only By One String.

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.

What A Different Result One Gets By Changing The Metaphor!

I Think I Should Have No Other Mortal Wants, If I Could Always Have Plenty Of Music. It Seems To Infuse Strength Into My Limbs And Ideas Into My Brain. Life Seems To Go On Without Effort, When I Am Filled With Music.

I Couldn't Live In Peace If I Put The Shadow Of A Willful Sin Between Myself And God.

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. . . .

Melodies Die Out, Like The Pipe Of Pan, With The Ears That Love Them And Listen For Them.

Bad Literature Of The Sort Called Amusing Is Spiritual Gin.

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.

Primary (the Lds Church's Sunday School For Children) Is Where You Go To Do With Somebody Else's Mother The Things You Would Do With Your Own Mother If She Weren't So Busy Teaching Primary.

Fear Was Stronger Than The Calculation Of Probabilities.

The Happiest Women, Like The Happiest Nations, Have No History.

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.

The Words Of Genius Have A Wider Meaning Than The Thought That Prompted Them.

If People Will Be Censors, Let Them Weigh Their Words. I Mean That The Words Were Unfair By That Disproportionateness Of The Condemnation, Which Everybody With Some Conscience Must Feel To Be One Of The Great Difficulties In Denouncing A Particular Person. Every Unpleasant Dog Is Only One Of Many, But We Kick Him Because He Comes In Our Way, And There Is Always Some Want Of Distributive Justice In The Kicking.

Hobbies Are Apt To Run Away With Us, You Know; It Doesn't Do To Be Run Away With. We Must Keep The Reins.

Wear A Smile And Have Friends; Wear A Scowl And Have Wrinkles.

Oh, Sir, The Loftiest Hopes On Earth Draw Lots With Meaner Hopes: Heroic Breasts, Breathing Bad Air, Run Risk Of Pestilence; Or, Lacking Lime-juice When They Cross The Line, May Languish With The Scurvy.

A Woman Dictates Before Marriage In Order That She May Have An Appetite For Submission Afterwards.

... There Is A Lightness About The Feminine Mind--a Touch And Go--music, The Fine Arts, That Kind Of Thing--they Should Study Those Up To A Certain Point, Women Should; But In A Light Way, You Know.

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

The Mother's Love Is At First An Absorbing Delight, Blunting All Other Sensibilities; It Is An Expansion Of The Animal Existence.

A Man Vows, And Yet Will Not East Away The Means Of Breaking His Vow. Is It That He Distinctly Means To Break It? Not At All; But The Desires Which Tend To Break It Are At Work In Him Dimly, And Make Their Way Into His Imagination, And Relax His Muscles In The Very Moments When He Is Telling Himself Over Again The Reasons For His Vow.

In The Chequered Area Of Human Experience The Seasons Are All Mingled As In The Golden Age: Fruit And Blossom Hang Together; In The Same Moment The Sickle Is Reaping And The Seed Is Sprinkled; One Tends The Green Cluster And Another Treads The Wine-press. Nay, In Each Of Our Lives Harvest And Spring-time Are Continually One, Until Death Himself Gathers Us And Sows Us Anew In His Invisible Fields.

...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.

Selfish— A Judgment Readily Passed By Those Who Have Never Tested Their Own Power Of Sacrifice.

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.

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.

Every Man Who Is Not A Monster, A Mathematician, Or A Mad Philosopher, Is The Slave Of Some Woman Or Other.

A Supreme Love, A Motive That Gives A Sublime Rhythm To A Woman's Life, And Exalts Habit Into Partnership With The Soul's Highest Needs, Is Not To Be Had Where And How She Wills.

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.

There Is A Sort Of Human Paste That When It Comes Near The Fire Of Enthusiasm Is Only Baked Into Harder Shape.

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

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 Difficult Task Of Knowing Another Soul Is Not For Young Gentlemen Whose Consciousness Is Chiefly Made Up Of Their Own Wishes.

That By Desiring What Is Perfectly Good, Even When We Don't Quite Know What It Is And Cannot Do What We Would, We Are Part Of The Divine Power Against Evil -- Widening The Skirts Of Light And Making The Struggle With Darkness Narrower.

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.

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.

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.

For Pain Must Enter Into Its Glorified Life Of Memory Before It Can Turn Into Compassion.

No Compliment Can Be Eloquent, Except As An Expression Of Indifference.

There's Folks As Make Bad Butter And Trusten To The Salt T' Hide It.

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.

Our Deeds Determine Us, As Much As We Determine Our Deeds.

We Are Rather Apt To Consider An Act Wrong Because It Is Unpleasant To Us.

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

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

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

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.

The Worst Of Misery Is When A Nature Framed For Noblest Things Condemns Itself In Youth To Petty Joys, And, Sore Athirst For Air, Breathes Scanty Life Gasping From Out The Shallows.

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.

The Strength Of The Donkey Mind Lies In Adopting A Course Inversely As The Arguments Urged, Which, Well Considered, Requires As Great A Mental Force As The Direct Sequence.

A Maggot Must Be Born I' The Rotten Cheese To Like It.

Life Is So Complicated A Game That The Devices Of Skill Are Liable To Be Defeated At Every Turn By Air-blown Chances, Incalculable As The Descent Of Thistle-down.

Hostesses Who Entertain Much Must Make Up Their Parties As Ministers Make Up Their Cabinets, On Grounds Other Than Personal Liking.

Our Dead Are Never Dead To Us Until We Have Forgotten Them: They Can Be Injured By Us, They Can Be Wounded; They Know All Our Penitence, All Our Aching Sense That Their Place Is Empty, All The Kisses We Bestow On The Smallest Relic Of Their Presence.

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.

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Tamara Ecclestone

Charles Kingsley

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