George Eliot

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

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.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.