George Eliot

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.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

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…

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

Nothing is black or white.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we’re so fond of it.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.