# Quote — George Eliot, Silas Marner

> He fled to his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences – perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting prudence.
>
> In this point of trusting in some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.

- Author: [George Eliot](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot.md)
- Book: [Silas Marner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner.md)
- Page: 73
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Eliot#Silas_Marner:_The_Weaver_of_Raveloe_(1861)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/he-fled-to-his

## More from this book

> when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.

p. 183 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/when-a-man.md)

> She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

p. 118 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/she-was-perfectly.md)

> "Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest — one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all — the big things come and go wi' no striving o' our'n — they do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the little un, Master Marner, seeing as it's been sent to you, though there's folks as thinks different."

p. 121 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-eliot/silas-marner/ah-said-dolly.md)