Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. - George Eliot

[Most people] are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. ... Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.

Who can prove
Wit to be witty when with deeper ground
Dulness intuitive declares wit dull?

Few things hold the perception more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say