GE to Oscar Browning, London, 31 January 1870
Title
GE to Oscar Browning, London, 31 January 1870
Title
GE to Oscar Browning, London, 31 January 1870
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Oscar Browning
Date(s)
- 1870-01-31
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Oscar Browning, London, 31 January 1870
Text: Thomas Madigan Catalogue 54 (1929), item 208.
North Bank, January 31, 1870.
A few words only -- to thank you for your letter written to me on your Birthday under the blue sky of Nice. May you have many birthdays after I am dead, and see the blue heavens and the green earth which it is good to think, will go on gladdening the human world none the less when one's own eyes are closed to them.
I say "Amen" to your gratitude that you have a definite position with unquestionable duties, to save you from vague ambitions. One must care for small immediate results as well as for great and distant ones -- and in my own mind nothing takes greater emphasis than the possibility of being certain that our own character and deeds make a few lives near to us better than they would have been without our presence in the world. Scepticism has less chance of creeping in here than in relation to larger results.
Text: Thomas Madigan Catalogue 54 (1929), item 208.
North Bank, January 31, 1870.
A few words only -- to thank you for your letter written to me on your Birthday under the blue sky of Nice. May you have many birthdays after I am dead, and see the blue heavens and the green earth which it is good to think, will go on gladdening the human world none the less when one's own eyes are closed to them.
I say "Amen" to your gratitude that you have a definite position with unquestionable duties, to save you from vague ambitions. One must care for small immediate results as well as for great and distant ones -- and in my own mind nothing takes greater emphasis than the possibility of being certain that our own character and deeds make a few lives near to us better than they would have been without our presence in the world. Scepticism has less chance of creeping in here than in relation to larger results.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Oscar Browning, London, 31 January 1870, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/93767