George Eliot

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

Consequences are unpitying.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer –committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

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

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

You are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great; you shall be governed by laws of your own making and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious life. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution and has given me his grace to keep it.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.