George Eliot

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

The disciplined are free.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.