George Eliot

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Responsibilities are given to him on whom trust rests. Responsibility is always a sign of trust.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.