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George Eliot – Felix Holt

Fancy what a game of chess would be if all chessmen had passions and intellects, more of less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself onto a new square on the sly; if your bishop, in disgust at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden.  You might be the longest headed of deductive reasoners and yet you might be beaten by your own pawns.  You would be especially likely to be beaten if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt.  Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow men with other fellow men for his instruments