George Eliot

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

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

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Anger makes dull men witty – but it keeps them poor.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

All say, How hard it is that we have to die – a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.

Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.