George Eliot

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

When you know better you do better.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to prepare for the long haul, the rise and fall, and let neither define your sense of self.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Think with your whole body.