"True wisdom begins when you realize the purest joy is found in giving without expectation."

Happiness

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Insight & Reflection

The theme of happiness is universal, yet George Eliot manages to capture its essence in a uniquely profound way. Taking a moment to internalize this can shift our mindset, reminding us that our perspective on happiness often shapes our reality.

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

"It is a quiet truth that kindness is the invisible thread that binds all kindred spirits together — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"We do not remember the passing of hours, but the resonance of moments. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"Every season of life has its own unique blossom, if only we take care to notice. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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More about Happiness

"There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool."

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"Major success feels a bit like a coronation. Like I'd become a king. I was one of the most famous people in the world, loved and hated in equal measure. I couldn't see anything bad with it. It made me a happy person."

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"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

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