George Eliot

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

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

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.