George Eliot

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Those who trust us educate us.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Excess in Apparel is another costly Folly. The very Trimming of the vain World would cloath all the naked one.

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it’s too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

I always forgive others. The anger; sadness; frustration; pain, whatever feelings I felt, no matter the hurt; the tears, I always found understanding and reason to forgive them; to not hold onto it; to not resent them. But there is one, who I never seem to be able to give absolution, and that’s myself.