George Eliot

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

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

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.