Status Updates From Daniel Deronda

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something in this object of complete love was not quite right? Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so; perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

...but--heaven help us all!--we are often unable to act on our certainties; our objection to a contrary issue (were it possible) is so strong that it rises like a spectral illusion between us and our certainty; we are rationally sure that the blind-worm cannot bite us mortally, but it would be so intolerable to be bitten, and the creature has a biting look--we decline to handle it.

And thinking of them in these moments, one is tempted to that futile sort of wishing--if only things could have been a little otherwise then, so as to have been greatly otherwise after!

Who supposes that it is an impossible contradiction to be superstitious and rationalizing at the same time?