Ideas Become Consequential

Ideas are often poor ghosts: they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm  breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion.

~ George Eliot’s Janet’s Redemption, quoted in the prologue of William Wilberforce’s Real Christianity.