How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?
("Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life")
More Quotes from George Eliot:
Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes . . .George Eliot
We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.
George Eliot
We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life -- some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed -- because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.
George Eliot
Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
George Eliot
How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him....
George Eliot
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
George Eliot
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