“Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill.”

—  George Eliot

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 10 (at page 81)

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English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880

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