George Eliot

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

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.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’ I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her… I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Nothing is black or white.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Wisdom is better than silver and gold. I was hopeless, now I’m on hope road.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.