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
Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.
Ulysses S. GrantRead
Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
Morrie SchwartzRead
The main cause is a pernicious falsehood propagated against her being, namely that she is inferior by her nature. Inferior in what? What has man ever done that woman, under the same advantages could not do?
Ernestine RoseRead
At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.
Nicole KraussRead
I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.
Vladimir NabokovRead
If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.
James D. WatsonRead