George Eliot

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

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

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

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.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

An empire is an immense egotism.

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.

The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

Rest in reason; move in passion.

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.