George Eliot

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.