George Eliot

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

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

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

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

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

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

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

You are braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.