It uneasy lot at best

We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but
when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what w

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 dim-sighted.

From Middelmarch, by George Elliot Read More