George Eliot

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

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

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.

Stupidity is something you can only partly save people from.

If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.

A picture is a poem without words.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Be ever on your guard what you say of anybody and to whom.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.