George Eliot

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

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

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.