We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves
George Eliot... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.
George EliotTo fear the examination of any proposition apears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever.
George Eliot... the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing.
George EliotSome discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
George Eliot