George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

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.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

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

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

Thus, by every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.