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

Failure

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Failure as articulated by George Eliot. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Failure provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Her novels are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place, and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

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More by George Eliot

"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories."

— George Eliot
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"If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence."

— George Eliot
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"In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations."

— George Eliot
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More about Failure

"Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes."

— John Dewey
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"He either fears his fate too much,  Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch,  To gain or lose it all."

— James Graham
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"I started dieting. I dieted, dieted, dieted and tried all the diets and I would lose and then I would go back to normal eating and would put it on and then some."

— Suzanne Somers
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"When you're fearless, you take more risks because you're less conscious of failure or what can go wrong."

— Brett Ratner
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