George Eliot

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

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

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

Whatever you have spend less.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Wisdom is better than silver and gold. I was hopeless, now I’m on hope road.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Opportunity makes a thief.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.