George Eliot

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

A vow is a snare for sin.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse; the flowering branches are; some long, some short.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any effect other than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

Reality is a sliding door.

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…