George Eliot - Daniel Deronda (1876)

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The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live with them — like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makes colour an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless ennui, may be making somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols.

George Eliot
You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.

George Eliot
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

George Eliot
There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

George Eliot
The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

George Eliot
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

George Eliot