George Eliot

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

When you’ve got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.

Blows are sarcasm’s turned stupid.

All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

The dice of God are always loaded.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.