George Eliot

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

My love for you was like a poem I wrote; one that I disregarded as average. Torn out, thrown away to the rubbish heap, waiting; wishing to be picked up and appreciated by someone else, for the masterpiece that it is.

No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

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

Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

She stepped out barefoot on to the grass, her soul naked, sun beating to her heart’s rhythm, bathing her skin. In her mind, she had already escaped.