Every one of those keen moments has left its trace by George Elliot/Childhood and life quote

William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting


Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives
in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably
with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it
comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with
a smilingdisbelief in the reality of their pain…Surely if
we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses,
the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave
the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs
of our children.
George Elliot – Mill on the Floss