George Eliot

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

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

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

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.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.

Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness , we don’t really know what love is.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it cannot be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.