George Eliot

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.