Olivia

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“He once called her his basil plant, and when she asked for an explanation said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch