George Eliot

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

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.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.