If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.
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Middlemarch by George Eliot
"There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side."
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
"I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
"Oh, child, men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness."
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
"Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. "
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Adam Bede by George Eliot