Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar. – George Eliot
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows. – George Eliot
Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in. – George Eliot
I desire no future that will break the ties with the past. – George Eliot
The past remains integral to us all, individually and collectively. We must concede the ancients their place, as I have argued. But their place is not simply back there in a separate and foreign country; it is assimilated in ourselves, and resurrected into an ever-changing present. – David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country