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Quote by George Eliot

Work

Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

George Eliot's renowned work explores themes of social change, moral growth, and the complexities of human relationships through the lens of the characters living in the town of Middlemarch during the early 19th century. more

Author

George Eliot
George Eliot

George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evans, was a renowned 19th-century British novelist. Her works are known for their profound psychological insights and critical exploration of social issues. With her unique narrative techniques and rich emotional expression, she has had a profound impact on literature. more

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“Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.”

“Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.”

“Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight.”