"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."
George Eliot, Middlemarch
I have always loved this quote. And by "always," I mean since last summer when I read Middlemarch for the first time.
It's one of the great ones, ever.