A Quote by George Eliot

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
We don't know how large a proportion of the significant evidence about the universe is excluded by science. Perhaps hardly any. Perhaps so great a proportion that any body of knowledge which excludes it is hardly more than a caricature. Perhaps something in between - so that science finds truth but not the whole truth.
For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.
Every footballer plays with the hope that people love to watch you. But, for me, there is no sympathy or interest. I don't seem to have any charm for fans.
There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know, you imagine. Imagination must come to an end...I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension - THAT is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all. It is not an experience.
One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.
There is (gentle reader) nothing (the works of God only set apart) which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences . Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man; but of all none do more garnish and beautify it than those arts which are called mathematical , unto the knowledge of which no man can attain, without perfect knowledge and instruction of the principles, grounds, and Elements of Geometry.
I'm more frightened than interested by artificial intelligence - in fact, perhaps fright and interest are not far away from one another. Things can become real in your mind, you can be tricked, and you believe things you wouldn't ordinarily. A world run by automatons doesn't seem completely unrealistic any more. It's a bit chilling.
Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.
One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.
Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.
In terms of - my relationship with so many, many young people. I would - I would guess that there are many young people who would come forward. Many more young people who would come forward and say that my methods and - and what I had done for them made a very positive impact on their life. And I didn't go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I've helped. There are many that I didn't have - I hardly had any contact with who I have helped in many, many ways.
The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
Man is very much a creature of habit. A thing that rarely strikes his senses will generally have but little influence upon his mind. A government continually at a distance and out of sight, can hardly be expected to interest the sensations of the people. The inference is, that the authority of the Union, and the affections of the citizens towards it, will be strengthened rather than weakened by its extension to what are called matters of internal concern.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
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