George Eliot

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

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.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gongthese are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Our best history is still poetry.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.