George Eliot

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.

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

What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

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.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

Remember who you are.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only – not from its privileged classes.

Rest in reason; move in passion.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.