George Eliot

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

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.

A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

A good scare is worth more than good advice.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’