"Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandPoets from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandTranslators from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Prelude
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"A man's a man, But when you see a king, you see the work Of many thousand men."
"Även små grytor har öron. or Små grytor har också öron."
"The real drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and …"
"If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally."
"I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully un…"
"I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving…"
"'Tis God gives skill, But not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio."
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of …"
"Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea whic…"
"My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree…"