George Eliot

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg…

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.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

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

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.

Men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

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

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

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

All mankind love a lover.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Courage is exhilarating.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?