Quote

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

George Eliot

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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
Thinking
Lies
Illusions
Unawares
World
Fool
Transparent
Middlemarch
People
Everybody
Carrying
Opaque
Alone
Yellow
Rosy
Lying
Exception
Exceptions
Making
Ridiculous
Lamp
Else
Illusion
Caps
Everything
Looked
Lamps

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It is a common sentence that knowledge is power but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.
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What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
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With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
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Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!
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What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
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This is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it.
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The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.
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But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.
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Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another
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Heaven help us, said the old religion the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.
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My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
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The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
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Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.
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What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?
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Whatever be thy fate today, Remember, this will pass away!
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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.
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Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.
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For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful. . . .
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Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit.
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