Go forward with joyful confidence.
George EliotRead
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our daily lives may not be as real or substantial as we think; they can feel like a dream.
This quote by George Eliot suggests that much of what we perceive and experience in our daily lives is not as tangible or meaningful as it seems. It encourages introspection about the nature of reality and the subjective experience of living, implying that one should seek deeper truths beyond the surface of everyday existence.
Themes
RealityDreamPerceptionExistenceIntrospection
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophy lecture about the nature of reality, this quote can provoke thought among students.
More from George Eliot
All quotes โYou 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 โ 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
To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is, 'He leads the way, keep close to Him.'
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Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
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Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.
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An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours.
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When we're interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena "signs," the sceptics "coincidence," and psychologists "concentrated focus," although I've yet to find out what term historians should use).
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In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesRead