George Eliot

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought – with these I deal.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

Branching streams cannot compare to the source.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.