George Eliot

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

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

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men’s heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

To delay justice, is injustice.

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.