George Eliot

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

Wake up, you’ve been sleeping. Take up your bed and walk. Stop blaming other people. Oh, it’s nobody else’s fault.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three.