What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
George Eliot Middlemarch, Chapter LXXII (1871)
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When and why it was written
- When
- From Middlemarch, 1871 to 1872.
- Why
- Dorothea says it while insisting on helping Lydgate, whom the town has turned against.
What it means
Dorothea's question is a whole ethics in one sentence. We are here to ease each other's way.
It makes a simple evening question: whose day did I make a little easier?
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Middlemarch, 1871
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