For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted.
George EliotThe moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation, as the moment of finding an idea.
George EliotCan any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.
George Eliot