George Eliot

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

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

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

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.

Practice makes perfect, and nobody’s perfect, so why practice?

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.