Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on ‘Golden Moments in the Stream of Life’)

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”—English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on What Goes Unrepaired by Nature)

“Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.” — English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Within only 48 hours, my neck of the woods here in New Jersey withstood both a nor’easter and an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter Scale. 

We have endured greater damage on other occasions, such as Hurricane Ida (see the accompanying picture), where, 2 1/2 years later, repairs are still being made, not by nature, but by mankind. 

But, as Eliot writes, there will indeed be isolated spots where nature leaves long-lasting, even irremediable, physical marks on us, and overall the fear lingers of what might happen next.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on ‘That Purest Heaven’)

“May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus'd, 
And in diffusion ever more intense! 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”—English novelist, poet, journalist and translator Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), “O May I Join the Choir Invisible!” from O May I Join the Choir Invisible and Other Favorite Poems (1884)

I came across this poem through the “Scherzo” episode in Endeavour, the PBS mystery series filled with such literary allusions.

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on People’s ‘Ridiculous’ Illusions)

“People were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”—English novelist Mary Ann Evens, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), Middlemarch (1871)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Why ‘Our Dead Are Never Dead to Us Until We Have Forgotten Them’)

“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.” —English novelist, translator, editor, and religious writer Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), Adam Bede (1859)

Almost nothing was conventional about George Eliot: her appearance; her religious skepticism; her piercing intellect at a time when educating women was not a family priority; her longtime common-law marriage to editor George Henry Elwes; her use of a male pen name so her initial novels would be taken more seriously; and finally, her death at age 61 on this day 140 years ago, in Chelsea, England, only six months after marrying a man 20 years her junior.

She blazed her own path in literature as well, with seven novels characterized by flinty realism and high moral seriousness. In this year of COVID-19, when so many people all over the world have experienced the death of family members or dear friends, the quote above seems not only a fair sample of her attitude, but also an appropriate response to the sense of loss so many feel.

Over the years, Eliot’s detractors (e.g., Mark Twain) have correctly noted her humorlessness, adding even heavier weight to her earnestness. 

But Virginia Woolf, in a 1919 Times Literary Supplement essay on the novelist’s career, generously but judiciously summarized her achievement by noting that she “taken to heart certain lessons learnt early, if learnt at all, among which, perhaps, the most branded upon her was the melancholy virtue of tolerance; her sympathies are with the everyday lot, and play most happily in dwelling upon the homespun of ordinary joys and sorrows.”

More pointedly, Woolf observed that in the 1871 masterpiece Middlemarch, Eliot had created, “with all its imperfections…one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

(In an especially relevant post for our time, Delia da Sousa Correa of London’s Open University has written for the Institute of English Studies blog about the role of an earlier epidemic—a cholera outbreak in Britain—in Middlemarch.)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on What We Live For)

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”—English novelist novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Being ‘Thoroughly Alive’)

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.” —English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880), The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Disappointment)

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ’Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others." — George Eliot, Middlemarch (1874)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on One With Nothing to Say)

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”— George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Animals As ‘Agreeable Friends’)

“Animals are such agreeable friends— they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”—George Eliot, “Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,” Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)