Frasi di George Eliot

pagina 9

“Un’intelligenza perfettamente sana è sempre un po’ spaesata in questo pazzo mondo.”

“I sotterfugi e le piccole bugie, ad un cuore leale, tanta pena quanto ad un artista le pennellate false che solo il suo occhio esperto sa distinguere. Ma diventano leggeri quando tutte le azioni sono state menzognere.”

“Gli animali sono amici così piacevoli: non fanno domande, non criticano.”

“Affidiamo la gente alla misericordia di Dio, ma noi non ne dimostriamo alcuna.”

“Dio è inconcepibile, l'immortalità incredibile, ma il dovere è perentorio e assoluto.”

“Se presti attenzione ai tuoi discorsi, ti accorgerai che sono guidati dai tuoi intenti meno coscienti.”

“In ogni separazione c'è un'immagine della morte.”

“Essere poeta significa possedere un'anima così pronta a comprendere che nessuna sfumatura di qualità le sfugge, e così pronta a sentire, che quella comprensione non è che una mano che suona con varietà finemente ordinata sulle corde del sentimento - un'anima il cui sapere si trasforma istantaneamente in sentimento e il sentimento torna in un baleno ad essere un nuovo organo del sapere.”

“Ci sono personalità in cui, se esse ci amano, siamo consapevoli di avere una sorta di battesimo e di consacrazione: esse ci vincolano alla rettitudine e alla purezza grazie alla loro pura fiducia in noi; e i nostri peccati divengono quel genere peggiore di sacrilegio che abbatte l'invisibile altare della fiducia. “Se tu non sei buono, non lo è nessuno” - queste brevi parole possono conferire un terribile significato alla responsabilità, possono contenere una forza corrosiva per il rimorso.”

“Ma ciò che chiamiamo disperazione è in realtà la dolorosa impazienza della speranza non alimentata.”

“Le nostre passioni non vivono l'una separata dall'altra, in camere serrate a chiave, ma, rivestite del loro modesto guardaroba di idee, portano i loro viveri a un tavolo comune e mangiano assieme, nutrendosi delle provviste comuni a seconda del loro appetito.”

“Se vedessimo e sentissimo in modo intenso tutta la normale vita umana, sarebbe come udire l'erba crescere e il pulsare del cuore dello scoiattolo, e moriremmo per il frastuono che è al di là del silenzio. Così come stanno le cose, i più svegli di noi si muovono ben imbottiti di stupidità.”

“Chiunque osservi con attenzione la convergenza furtiva dei destini umani, scorge una lenta preparazione di effetti che una vita esercita su un'altra, che ha l'effetto di una calcolata ironia sull'indifferenza o sullo sguardo gelido con cui guardiamo il nostro vicino non ancora conosciuto. Il Destino sta in attesa, sarcastico, tenendo i nostri dramatis personae stretti in pugno.”

“Suppongo che una delle ragioni per le quali riusciamo molto raramente a consolare il nostro prossimo, sia quella che il nostro buon volere non sa tradursi in parole. Possiamo mandare doni e aiuti senza dar loro il sapore del nostro egoismo; ma la parola è come un torrente che conserva le tracce del terreno impuro che ha attraversato.”

“Le sofferenze acute e varie che nascono dalla sensibilità che accompagna una elevata cultura, sono forse meno degne di pietà di quella cupa privazione di ogni consolazione intellettuale, che obbliga le menti rozze a trovarsi costantemente a tu per tu con i propri dispiaceri e le proprie pene.”

“Sorridi e fatti degli amici; ostenta un cipiglio e fatti venire le rughe: per che cosa viviamo, se non per rendere questo mondo meno difficile per tutti?”

“Certo che le donne sono sciocche: Dio Onnipotente le ha create per essere uguali agli uomini.”

“L'infanzia non conosce inquietudine; ma, allo stesso tempo, non è placata da alcun ricordo di tristezza, che sia passata e a cui si sia sopravvissuti.”

“È sempre fatale interrompere la musica o la poesia.”

“Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.”

“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”

“He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark.”

“The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink...”

“If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.”

“Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.”

“The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.”

“The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state.”

“Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.”

“With thy coming Melody was come.
This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow,
And that immeasurable life to know
From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead,
A seed primeval that has forests bred.”

“Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.”

“Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic — the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.”

“If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon.”

“How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice...”

“He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.”

“Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest — one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all — the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n — they do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the little un, Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though there's folks as thinks different.”

“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habbit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favour of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.”

“So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.”

“So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.”

“[Mr Johnson] "You know what a Tory is – one who wants to drive the working men as he'd drive cattle."”

“One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.”

“Certain winds will make men's temper bad.”

“If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.”

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it…”

“His smile is sweetened by his gravity.”

“no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods”

“People who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.”

“Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”