George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

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

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.