Dim Lights, from Steve Leslie
Among American authors, my favorite is Steinbeck. And I have always had great affectation for Jack London. But George Eliot is my favorite author after Charles Dickens, so I wanted to share this passage from her novel Middlemarch:
With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul.