George Eliot

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

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

Labor diligently to increase your property.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

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

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.