George Eliot

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

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.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

I’ll tell you why yes, because why people lie is, because when people stop lying you know they’ve stopped caring.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.