evidence: Quibble: A brief one. At the start of the book is a quote credited to George Eliot that says "It is never too late to be what you might have been." A good line though in a recent New Yorker article entitled Middlemarch and Me by Rebecca Mead the author learned that this line does not apparently appear in any George Eliot novel. What’s more, it’s almost impossible to figure out where that line came from. Fascinating stuff.