George Eliot Quotes About Vision

• The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

  George Eliot

  Lying, Responsibility, Tolerance

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.1282, Wordsworth Editions

• 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

  Heart, Squirrels, History

  "Middlemarch". Volume 1,

• Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

  George Eliot

  Self, Objectivity, Vision

  George Eliot (2016). “Middlemarch”, p.386, Xist Publishing

• For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities - a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces - a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

  George Eliot

  Life, Past, Reality

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.75

• Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

  George Eliot

  Self, Vision, Height

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.165, Booklassic

• 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)

• Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.

  George Eliot

  Vision, Use, Sensibility

  "Complete Works of George Eliot".

• But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!

  George Eliot

  Ambition, Long, Miracle

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2578, Delphi Classics

• There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.

  George Eliot

  Men, Race, Imagination

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6957, Delphi Classics

• ... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

  George Eliot

  Ambition, Vision, Ease

  George Eliot (2006). “Middlemarch: Easyread Edition”, p.402, ReadHowYouWant.com

• A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?

  George Eliot

  Girl, Believe, Weather

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola: In Two Volumes”, p.76

• It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.

  George Eliot

  Memories, Powerful, Passion

• Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.

  George Eliot

  Love, Dark, Blue

  George Eliot (2006). “Middlemarch: Easyread Edition”, p.35, ReadHowYouWant.com

• Quick souls have their intensest life in the first anticipatory sketch of what may or will be, and the pursuit of their wish is the pursuit of that paradisiacal vision which only impelled them, and is left farther and farther behind, vanishing forever even out of hope in the moment which is called success.

  George Eliot

  Forever, Soul, Vision

  George Eliot (1869). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.49

• Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

  George Eliot

  Dream, Men, Vision

  Robert Coles, George Eliot, George Orwell, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope (2007). “Political Leadership: Stories of Power and Politics from Literature and Life”, p.19, Modern Library

• With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader.

  George Eliot

  Book, Past, Mirrors

  George Eliot (2016). “Adam Bede”, George Eliot

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