# Quote — George Eliot, Middlemarch

> Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Middlemarch](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Middlemarch_(1871-72)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/every-limit-is-a-beginning

## More from this book

> It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/it-is-true.md)

> What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/what-loneliness-is-more.md)

> ‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known— ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.’

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/middlemarch/i-suppose-a-woman.md)
