George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

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

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

No one ever became great by imitation.

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.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

It always seems impossible until it is done.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.