Go forward with joyful confidence.
Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the early moments of discovering a passion for learning through books and conversation.
In this quote, George Eliot emphasizes the significance of those initial encounters with knowledge that spark a love for learning. It suggests that whether through reading an untried book, engaging with a speaker, or reflecting internally, these experiences form the foundation of a lifelong passion for subjects we hold dear. It highlights the idea that our intellectual journeys often begin with curiosity and openness to new ideas.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of lifelong learning, you could use this quote to highlight how we often find our passion for knowledge.
More from George Eliot
All quotes βYou 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.
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 β that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
As parents, we teach our kids about things we feel competent in. That's why so many parents don't teach their kids about money.
Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.
The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.
But once we realize that people have very different kinds of minds, different kinds of strengths -- some people are good in thinking spatially, some in thinking language, others are very logical, other people need to be hands on and explore actively and try things out -- then education, which treats everybody the same way, is actually the most unfair education.
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
In the 2013 Economists Program, we hired 51 percent women, 49 percent men. And the reason for that is that we have a draft from all over the world, and we've hired, for instance, in that group, a good number of Chinese economists - highly qualified, all Ph.D.s from the best universities of the world. And guess what? They're all women.