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George Eliot

(1819-80)

The idea of God, so far as it has been a high spiritual influence, is the ideal of a goodness

entirely human. (Letter to the Hon. Mrs H. F. Ponsonby, 10 December 1874)

We do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of

frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it.

(Middlemarch bk. 2, ch. 20)

Again my attention to these pithy quotes by the George Eliot Page