George Eliot

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

All the learnin’ my father paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.