George Eliot

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

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.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…

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

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible….except by getting off his back.

Necessity does everything well.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.