Deep sadness Quote by George Eliot
““Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah! so like our mother’s—averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage—the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand—galls us, and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence.””
About This Quote
Source Novel: “Middlemarch”, 1871
Family ties blend love and sorrow, reflecting deep emotional complexity and shared humanity.
In simple terms: Family brings both joy and pain.
Key Takeaway
Embrace complex relationships.
Themes
family
identity
emotion
Mood
melancholic
introspective
Type
literary
philosophical
When to use this quote
- family gatherings
- therapy
- generational storytelling
- conflict mediation
Key Concepts
psychology
literature
Questions to Reflect On
- How do you navigate love and resentment?
- What patterns repeat across generations?
A Different Perspective
Idealizes familial bonds, overlooking dysfunction.
![“[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.” quote by George Eliot](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9be/george-eliot-84_agony_w-e-must-learn-to-accommodate-ourselves_12409.jpg)
