"...but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle - solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness."

"Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline."

"Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty."

"It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees."

"Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder."

"What should I do-how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness."

"Tis what I love determines how I love."

"Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and makes the whole life its tributary."

"Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity."

"Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control."

"She had forgotten his faults as we forgetthe sorrows of our departed childhood."

"Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life."

"In every parting there is an image of death."

"When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures."

"There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life."

"He sat watching what went forward with the quiet outward glance of healthy old age."

"I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so."

"We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves."

"It's but little good you'll go a-water-ing the last year's crop."

"Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart."

"Blameless people are always the most exasperating."

"When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his."

"In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

"The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth."

"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."

"Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support."

"Speech may be barren but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs."

"Yes! Thank God; 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... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy."

"Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination."

"Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it."

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"College mostly makes people like bladders-just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em."

"On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers."

"Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything""nothing else 'answered;' and Lydgate supposed that 'if things were done at all, they must be done properly'"he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that 'it could hardly come to much,' and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article"for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear"it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion."

"What secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an 'appointment') which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?"

"Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences of their recklessness."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are."

"The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best."

"I told you from the beginning-as soon as I could-I told you I was afraid of myself." There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur in which Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too much. "I felt a hatred in me that was always working like an evil spirit-contriving things. Everything I could do to free myself came into my mind; and it got worse-all things got worse. That is why I asked you to come to me in town. I thought then I would tell you the worst about myself. I tried. But I could not tell everything."

"The devil tempts us not; 'tis we who tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity."

"Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another."

"The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief."

"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."

"A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved."

"In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past-sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories."