George Eliot

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

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

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.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

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.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.