But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

To judge wisely, we must know how things appear to the unwise.

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch

... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson.