George Eliot

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Roberts Brothers, 1885 - 290 pages

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Page 11 - This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.
Page 290 - OH may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence : live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.
Page 242 - Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.
Page 17 - These familiar flowers, these well-remembered birdnotes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows - such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them.
Page 27 - Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.
Page 165 - ... almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink.
Page 20 - One day my brother left me in high charge, To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait, And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge, Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late. Proud of the task, I watched with all my might For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide, Till sky and earth took on a strange new light And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide A fair pavilioned boat for me alone Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.
Page 96 - GIVEN, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and 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...
Page 6 - That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Page 150 - I hope the good man's in heaven for all that,' said my uncle. ' Oh yes,' said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, ' Mr. A.'s in heaven, that's sure.' This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic, hard views — how beautiful it is to me now ! " As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl...

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