George Eliot

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we’re so fond of it.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

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

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

The first wealth is health.

Man is God’s highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.