George Eliot

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

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.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?