George Eliot

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

There is a wisdom of the head, and there is a wisdom of the heart.