Comes Ignorance, drunk on the seventh

I'm a huge fan of classic literature, especially 1800's writing. Don't ask me why, I just am. While I will profess an undying love for certain French authors (Dumas and Hugo in particular), I am finding a surprising amount of fun in reading some of the English as well. I finished D.H. Lawerence's "Sons and Lovers" a few months ago, and I'm working my way though George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda".

Along with loving books, I also tend to develop affinities for words in general. I love quotes by people (famous or not), and tend to collect them in my mind. Whenever I find something new, I have this overpowering urge to share it with people. My new favouritest quote came from a chapter heading in Daniel Deronda:

Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be' - and the many-coloured creation is shrivelled up in blackness.

Not only is the sentence beautifully constructed, the subject is near and dear to my heart. Teaching is a passion of mine, and it's the ignorant opinions out there that can cause so much damage. Ignorance drives me insane. It's perfectly ok to not know something. I'll be the first to say that I'm an opinionated person, but I like to believe that I form educated opinions. Other people not so much. It's a pet peeve of mine.

So if you're interested, I've posted the whole excerpt from the chapter heading (Daniel Deronda, Chapter XXI) below. The whole book is good reading, I recommend it highly, but only if you have the patience for classic styles of writing. Otherwise, stay away, you'll bore yourself to tears. Happy reading!

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be' - and the many-coloured creation is shrivelled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practised vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled - like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp - precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction? -- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda Chapter XXI