George Eliot

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium – indifference.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven’t developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don’t know how to eliminate them effectively.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.