George Eliot

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

Blows are sarcasm’s turned stupid.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.

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 should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.

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

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.