Sentence No. 113 · 18 July 2026
A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping.
George Eliot, Middlemarch
George Eliot — Middlemarch (1872) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Two parallel relative clauses both beginning with 'who' describe the 'great workers' — the comma before 'and who' signals the second clause is joining the first. When you see paired relative clauses like this, the second 'who' phrase follows the first, never opens the sentence.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A doctor's reflective mood at home, sustained by lofty ambitions. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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