quotes from classic

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

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Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.

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Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

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What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

more quotes from George Eliot

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

more quotes from George Eliot

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.

more quotes from George Eliot

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles... 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.

more quotes from George Eliot

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

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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

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The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they're gone.

more quotes from George Eliot

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

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There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence....

more quotes from George Eliot

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.

more quotes from George Eliot

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

more quotes from George Eliot

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.

more quotes from George Eliot

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

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To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.

more quotes from Leonard Cohen

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

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Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

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Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.

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