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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #eli
We are social animals. We like to feel a part of something of beauty and power that transcends our insignificance. It can be a religion, a political party, a ball club. Why not also Nature? I feel a strong identity with the world of living things. I was born into it; we all were. But we may not feel the ties unless we gain intimacy by seeing, feeling, smelling, touching and studying the natural world. Trying to live in harmony with the dictates of nature is probably as inspirational as living in harmony with the Koran or the Bible. Perhaps it is also a timely undertaking. ↗
Their dad said, “Heaven is beautiful like your mother was beautiful, but like it beauty is fleeting and once beheld for years, for decades, gold that seemed precious and unique no longer holds the significance it once held to the one who has possessed it and been possessed by it. And heaven resides in God’s breast, not the true god, for there is no true god, only many faces and many incarnations of want, of structure, of meaning. And his heart-tent is vast drawing to it those who swear allegiance to beauty and partial truth. Partial,” their father said, stroking Maggie’s arm, “because truth is independent of religion or creed or upbringing. It is a matter of the heart, separate from fact, without the limitations of doctrine. And what would heaven feel like? More of the same corrupt single-mindedness of a deity who abhors independence, who truly and fiercely fights the accumulation of knowledge in its worshipers. So the weak run to it, the road-weary, the undecided. Because God makes things easy, they do not have to make choices for themselves, they do not have to study the greater mysteries that echo like a clarion call in their souls and resonate in their hearts, seeds planted in the dark soil of their youth that are burned to chaff in the commonplace, never tilled or watered, hopeless due to acquiescence. ↗
As he stood there, the audience was forgotten. The past, with all its mistakes and suffering, its doubt and sin, came before him for an instant, then vanished, and his heart leaped for joy, because he knew that it was gone forever. And the future, made beautiful by the presence of Christ and the conviction that he was right with God, stretched away as a path leading ever upward, until it was lost in the glories of the life to come, while he heard, as in a dream, the words of his confessed Master, “Follow: thou me. ↗
The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. ... As a novelist, I want to be more than one more dog barking at the other dogs barking at me. Not out of any foolish hope that one novelist, or all virtuous novelists in chorus, can make much of a difference for good, except in the long run, but out of the need to prevent the human world from relaxing into something worse. To maintain the tension between truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. ... I believe the highest duty of the serious novelist is, whatever the means or technique, to be a critic of his society, to hold society to its own ideals, or if these ideals are unworthy, to suggest better ideals. ↗
I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around. A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess. And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow? ↗
#death #depression #family #glass-girl #grief
No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance--quite remarkably and unusually beautiful, warm and velvety as he had never known them, ushered in each evening by the most astonishing variety of splendid sunsets--nobody had said a single word about them. They might have been February ones, for all the notice they got. Sometimes he climbed up to the top of Burdon Down towards evening, and stood staring in amazement at what looked like heaven let loose in flames over England; but always he stood alone, always there was no one but himself up there, and no one afterwards, when he descended from his heights, seemed to be aware that anything unusual had been going on. ↗
I hadn’t gone to Andover, or Horace Mann or Eton. My high school had been the average kind, and I’d been the best student there. Such was not the case at Eli. Here, I was surrounded by geniuses. I’d figured out early in my college career that there were people like Jenny and Brandon and Lydia and Josh—truly brilliant, truly luminous, whose names would appear in history books that my children and grandchildren would read, and there were people like George and Odile—who through beauty and charm and personality would make the cult of celebrity their own. And then there were people like me. People who, through the arbitrary wisdom of the admissions office, might share space with the big shots for four years, might be their friends, their confidantes, their associates, their lovers—but would live a life well below the global radar. I knew it, and over the years, I’d come to accept it. And I understood that it didn’t make them any better than me. ↗
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds wihich may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason -- that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. - Adam Bede p. 359 ↗
We have been together for 40 years, married for 36. There have been three times in our relationship when we were unable to resolve an issue on our own. We used all the skill that we have and yet it was still unresolved. In those three times we sought professional help because there was a blind spot for each of us. The therapist was able to listen to both of us and help us come to a place of resolution that we both felt good about. I feel very grateful for that help. Most times we have been able to work things through on our own. Sometimes we can clear the issue in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes an hour and sometimes it can take several days. But we still keep working on it until we both say that we feel complete, we understand our own part and responsibility in the issue rather than simply blaming each other, are willing to go on, and there is an even deeper connection and sometimes even humor to the situation. In working each issue through to completion we have been able to retain a beautiful lightness in our relationship that we both cherish. ↗
She was right about something else too,ʺ Dimitri said after a long pause. My back was to him, but there was a strange quality to his voice that made me turn around. ʺWhatʹs that?ʺ I asked. ʺThat I do still love you.ʺ With that one sentence, everything in the universe changed. Time slowed to one heartbeat. The world became his eyes, his voice. This wasnʹt happening. It wasnʹt real. None of it could be real. It felt like a spirit dream. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and see if Iʹd wake up moments later. No. No matter how unbelievable it all seemed, this was no dream. This was real. This was life. This was flesh and blood. ʺSince . . . since when?ʺ I finally managed to ask. ʺSince . . . forever.ʺ His tone implied the answer was obvious. ʺI denied it when I was restored. I had no room for anything in my heart except guilt. I especially felt guilty about you—what Iʹd done—and I pushed you away. I put up a wall to keep you safe. It worked for a while—until my heart finally started accepting other emotions. And it all came back. Everything I felt for you. It had never left; it was just hidden from me until I was ready. And again . . . that alley was the turning point. I looked at you . . . saw your goodness, your hope, and your faith. Those are what make you beautiful. So, so beautiful. ↗
