George Eliot

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.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Letting go is not giving up.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Cultivate kindness today and always.

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.