Quote

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Eliot
Age: 61 †
Born: 1819
Born: November 22
Died: 1880
Died: December 22
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
Mary Anne Evans
Mary Ann Evans
Marian Evans
Mary Anne Evans Cross
Mary Anne Cross
Life
Rest
Ill
World
Numbers
Hidden
Incalculably
Growing
Dependent
Middlemarch
Half
Acts
Faithfully
Around
Effect
Owing
Might
Lived
Tombs
Good
Number
Obscurity
Things
Effects
Partly

More quotes by George Eliot

Image
Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and would cut them in two.
George Eliot
Image
It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found - in loving obedience.
George Eliot
Image
Genius is the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.
George Eliot
Image
I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.
George Eliot
Image
I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.
George Eliot
Image
When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are.
George Eliot
Image
If I could only fancy myself clever, it would be better, but to be a failure of Nature and to know it is not a comfortable lot. It is the last lesson one learns, to be contented with one's inferiority -- but it must be learned.
George Eliot
Image
in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy.
George Eliot
Image
It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious.
George Eliot
Image
Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.
George Eliot
Image
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.
George Eliot
Image
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again the parted hills are left scarred if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.
George Eliot
Image
Even success needs its consolations.
George Eliot
Image
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
George Eliot
Image
There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.
George Eliot
Image
I love not to be choked with other men's thoughts.
George Eliot
Image
I protest against any absolute conclusion.
George Eliot
Image
Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.
George Eliot
Image
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.
George Eliot
Image
How oft review each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend.
George Eliot