Go forward with joyful confidence.
George EliotRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Illusions may represent a broader understanding of reality and connect us with the greater forces of the world.
George Eliot suggests that what we perceive as illusions may actually offer us a deeper insight into the interconnectedness of our lives with the larger fabric of reality. These illusions indicate a harmonious movement of our souls aligned with the world's forces, guiding us toward a more certain future than what the randomness of individual existence might dictate.
Themes
IllusionsRealityVisionSoulTruthForcesLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing one's dreams despite obstacles.
More from George Eliot
All quotes →You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well.
George EliotRead
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
George EliotRead
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
George EliotRead
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
George EliotRead
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.
George EliotRead
Similar quotes
When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
Jonathan SacksRead
It takes so many years to learn that one is dead.
T. S. EliotRead
On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberg, when two soldiers came took him away. As he left, he said to another prisoner, This is the end - but for me, the beginning - of life. He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Henry David ThoreauRead
The way you really find out about the performer's seriousness about the cause is how long they stay with it when the spotlight gets turned off. You see a lot of celebrities switch gears. They go from the environment to animal rights to obesity or whatever. That I don't have a lot of respect for.
Robert RedfordRead
Even when you err, it is a thousand times better to err out of conviction than to hide your true opinion to respect some authority.
Houston Stewart ChamberlainRead