George Eliot

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

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

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.