George Eliot

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

When you know better, you do better.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.