George Eliot Quotes About Mankind

• Some 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

  Real, Lying, Heart

  Middlemarch bk. 2, ch. 20 (1871 - 1872)

• Mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side.

  George Eliot

  Winning, Victory, Heroism

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.1113, Wordsworth Editions

• There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives--when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.

  George Eliot

  Girl, Husband, War

  George Eliot (2009). “Daniel Deronda”, p.689, Oxford Paperbacks

• Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

  George Eliot

  Believe, Leisure, Vacuums

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.834, ShandonPress

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