That sweet monotony

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, – if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves in the grass – the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows – the same redbreasts that we used to call 'God's birds' because they did no harm to the precious crops – What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known? [...] Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics, 1985) p. 94