George Eliot

Impressions of Theophrastus Such George Eliot

It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true accountof my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been anattentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling itrather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and sufferings with atenacity which is too apt to raise surprise if not disgust at the careless inaccuracy of myacquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never held, express their desire to convert me to myfavourite ideas, forget whether I have ever been to the East, and are capable of being three severaltimes astonished at my never having told them before of my accident in the Alps, causing me thenervous shock which has ever since notably diminished my digestive powers. Surely I ought to knowmyself better than these indifferent outsiders can know me; nay, better even than my intimatefriends, to whom I have never breathed those items of my inward experience which have chieflyshaped my life.