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Saturday 26 November 2011

Unvisited tombs


Another quote from the pen of George Eliot which always reminds me of the debts we owe to forgotten people. Moral debts that is - not those financial debts incurred by incompetent governments.

Eliot's quote is about those who simply spent their lives getting on with things, doing what they could, what they saw as the best thing to do. There are still many people like that, in spite of decades of malign and spiteful meddling in every aspect of our lives.

Her words seem particularly apt during a time of unease about mounting political tensions in Europe, especially as we have recently remembered those who gave everything to secure our freedom.

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot – Middlemarch

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