Monday, April 11, 2011

Quotation of the day for April 11, 2011

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Quotation of the Day for April 11, 2011



"I was the final speaker, and my subject was a quotation attributed to George Eliot that I had recently been coming across: `It is never too late to be what you might have been.' The first time I saw the phrase was on a refrigerator magnet, where it was set in sans-serif type on an aquamarine starburst background--design choices that seemed evocative more of the New Age than the Victorian age. After hunting around, I discovered the quotation in other contexts. Marianne Williamson, the best-selling author of spiritual books, included it in `The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life.' Tom Peters, the best-selling author of `In Search of Excellence,' cited it on his Web site. It appeared on many personal blogs, and seemed particularly popular among middle-aged women. One author, BJ Gallagher, had even taken the quote as a book title. `You only go around once in this life, so why not live a life you love?' Gallagher wrote. `You were put on this earth to be the best YOU that you can be. If you don't do it, nobody else can.'

...

"[but] I discovered on re-reading her novels; it is nowhere to be found in Eliot's fiction. Nor is it a paraphrase of a sentiment that registers in her work... Scholars haven't turned up the quotation either--William Baker, of Northern Illinois University, who edits the journal George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, told me he believed that the quotation had been misattributed to Eliot by a greeting-card company, and had subsequently been disseminated into popular culture."

- Rebecca Mead, in the article Middlemarch and Me, from the February 14/21 issue of The New Yorker.

Submitted by: Z.D.Hora
Mar. 25, 2011

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