George Eliot

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

Beauty rests on necessities.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It’s very important to be aware of them every time they come up.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.