Justice is like the kingdom of God — it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning.

—George Eliot

justice God yearning

About George Eliot

Portrait of George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the...

More quotations from George Eliot

But the mother's yearning . . . feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

—George Eliot

failure man mother child

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

—George Eliot

love life mother

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

—George Eliot

silence communication

To get an idea of our fellow countrymen's miseries we have only to look at their pleasures.

—George Eliot

pleasure misery

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

—George Eliot

More quotations tagged with “yearning”

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

—Louise Erdrich in The Painted Drum

solitude love life risk vulnerability heartbreak yearning

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

—Iris Murdoch

indifference lust body yearning want

All writing, even the clumsy kind, exposes in its loops and slants a yearning deeper than an intention, the soul of the writer flopping on the clothes-peg of his exclamation mark.

—Paul Theroux

writing soul yearning intention

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

—Andre Breton

longing yearning naming

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby

future effort desire striving yearning want