George Eliot

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

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.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

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.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

I think we foreshorten our own viewpoint if we consider any state of mind, or society, or government as final. Growth and change! We can’t get away from them.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

When you place yourself in a position to help another, you will discover your greater capabilities.

Friends are thieves of time.