George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

I want to be all used up when I die.