George Eliot

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.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

A Man in Business must put up many Affronts, if he loves his own Quiet.

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.