George Eliot

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

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

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.