George Eliot

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

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…

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

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

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.

I’m taking more time to listen to myself. It’s allowed me to be an aggressive bad ass, calling it as I see it

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.