George Eliot

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

I could never be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

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.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

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

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.