George Eliot

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg…

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.