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"Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates."
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"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."
"You and I, we must carry on, Gemma. I cannot afford the luxury of love. I must marry well. And now I must look after you. It is my duty.""If you wish to suffer, you do so of your own free will, not on my behalf. Or Father's or Grandmama's or anyone's. You are a fine physician, Thomas. Why is that not enough?""Because it isn't," he says with a rare candor. "Only this and the hope of nothing more? A quiet respectability with no true greatness or heroism in it, with only my reputation to recommend me. So you see, Gemma, you are not the only one who cannot rule her own life."
"If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed."
"Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other."
Duty,
"No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe."
"Your fear is, that if you marry AdA le, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You're afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it's because of another kind of love, isn't it, that the duty is laid upon you?"
"When we carry out our "religious duties" we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last water comes, it may find them ready."
Explore more quotes by George Eliot
"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James."No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader."
"You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing."
"She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception."
"The days were longer then (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings."
"Mrs. Bulstrode's naA ve way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask..."
"Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them."
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