George Eliot

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

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

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

It’s like something shifted when I spoke to you, I can’t even put words to it. This sense of gentle peace, space, lightness, freedom. The realization that the longing I carried for so long, that pain was not about him all along. It was the yearning to return to that place from which, once upon a time, we all came.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.