# Quote — George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

> The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live with them — like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makes colour an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless ennui, may be making somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols.

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Daniel Deronda](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/daniel-deronda.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Daniel_Deronda_(1876)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/daniel-deronda/the-beings-closest

## More from this book

> A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habbit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favour of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/daniel-deronda/a-human-life.md)

> There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/daniel-deronda/there-is-a-great.md)

> I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/daniel-deronda/i-say-that.md)