George Eliot

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

All the learnin’ my father paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

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

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

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

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Life is a progress, and not a station.

Hurricanes are named after people, baby, and I hope you know that falling in love with me will be so much more treacherous than boarding up the windows and waiting for me to pass.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

To know fulfillment, nourish what is for the belly and not the eye.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.