George Eliot

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.

Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

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

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.