"Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries"
About this Quote
George Eliot’s jab at “might, could, would” is a shot across the bow at Victorian indecision: the grammatical mood of possibility masquerading as moral sophistication. These aren’t neutral helper verbs in her framing; they’re verbal loopholes. “Might” and “could” let you rehearse virtue without the inconvenience of commitment. “Would” offers the most seductive alibi of all: a hypothetical good self, always just beyond circumstance, forever untested.
Calling them “contemptible auxiliaries” is a small masterpiece of compression. “Auxiliaries” sounds properly grammatical, even military - support troops, not the ones who take the hill. Eliot’s point is that possibility-talk is a kind of cowardly support structure for the ego. You can build an entire self-image out of intentions that never meet consequence. Contempt isn’t directed at uncertainty as such; it’s aimed at the way uncertainty becomes a lifestyle, a rhetorical habit that protects people from accountability while letting them feel deep.
The context matters: Eliot’s novels obsess over the ethics of ordinary life, where character is revealed less by grand declarations than by the daily, unglamorous choice to act. Victorian culture prized propriety and self-control; it also perfected the art of polite evasion. Eliot hears in these auxiliaries the era’s favorite refuge: the conditional sentence that keeps desire, duty, and fear suspended in air. The line doesn’t just scold. It dares the reader to trade imaginative rehearsal for the riskier verb that’s missing: “will.”
Calling them “contemptible auxiliaries” is a small masterpiece of compression. “Auxiliaries” sounds properly grammatical, even military - support troops, not the ones who take the hill. Eliot’s point is that possibility-talk is a kind of cowardly support structure for the ego. You can build an entire self-image out of intentions that never meet consequence. Contempt isn’t directed at uncertainty as such; it’s aimed at the way uncertainty becomes a lifestyle, a rhetorical habit that protects people from accountability while letting them feel deep.
The context matters: Eliot’s novels obsess over the ethics of ordinary life, where character is revealed less by grand declarations than by the daily, unglamorous choice to act. Victorian culture prized propriety and self-control; it also perfected the art of polite evasion. Eliot hears in these auxiliaries the era’s favorite refuge: the conditional sentence that keeps desire, duty, and fear suspended in air. The line doesn’t just scold. It dares the reader to trade imaginative rehearsal for the riskier verb that’s missing: “will.”
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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