George Eliot

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

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

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

Consequences are unpitying.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I trust no one, not even myself.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.