George Eliot

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

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

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

The listlessness of it all, the profit off depression, the extinction of an entire species, the chlorinated connections- poisoned just to appear clean.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

The rain comes and what bends will rise. It is a purposeful journey.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.