Does any one suppose that private...

Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?

- George Eliot

Middlemarch

prayer self-justification

Other quotes by George Eliot

Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.

- George Eliot

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

- George Eliot

The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

- George Eliot

She was no longer wresting with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

- George Eliot

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.

- George Eliot

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.

- George Eliot

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