George Eliot

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

It all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?