George Eliot

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

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Today is a king in disguise.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

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