“We have found a method of creating an order of human co–operation which far exceeds the limits of our knowledge. We are led to do things by circumstances of which we are largely unaware. We do not know the needs which we satisfy, nor do we know the sources of the things which we get. We stand in an enormous framework into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that we have never made and never understood, but which have their reason.”

Section 37, Ch.6 Misfits
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts

The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 24
Leviathan (1651)

Entry (1955)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

Lieutenant Colonel Brian Windham, p. 104
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Company (1982)

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
Context: All we know is, that even the humblest dead may live along after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doing it in the bodies and memories of these that come after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament. It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Zara, Act I, Sc. 1.
Zara (1735)