The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.
George Eliot Middlemarch, Finale (1871)
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When and why it was written
- When
- The closing paragraph of Middlemarch, published in 1871 and 1872.
- Why
- Eliot is summing up Dorothea's quiet life, which made no great mark on history.
What it means
Eliot ends her great novel by honouring the people who live faithfully and are forgotten. Much of the good in the world, she says, comes from them.
It is a strong argument for the worth of an ordinary, well-lived day.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Middlemarch, 1871
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