George Eliot

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

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer –committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

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…

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

You’ve got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you’re gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn’t work that way.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.