George Eliot

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

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

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.