George Eliot

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

Cruelty like every other vice requires no motive outside of itself, it only requires opportunity.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

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

Might could would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty, but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

No compliment can be eloquent except as an expression of indifference.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action choice resolved memory.

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.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

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

It always remains true that if we had been greater circumstance would have been less strong against us.

In every parting there is an image of death.

Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.

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

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment in which each feels that the other is feeling something having once existed its effect is not to be done away with.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Our words have wings but fly not where we would.

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

That's what a man wants in a wife mostly, he wants to make sure one fool tells him he's wise.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

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

I like not only to be loved but also to be told I am loved.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

For what is love itself for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

Iteration like friction is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

The only failure one should fear is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love and desire to continue in and make no effort to escape from.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

Great things are not done by impulse but by a series of small things brought together.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The happiest women like the happiest nations have no history.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

It is a common enough case that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

Wear a smile and have friends, wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

To have in general but little feeling seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.

It is easy to say how we love new friends and what we think of them but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

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.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder but a hatred of all injury.

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

We must not sit still and look for miracles, up and doing and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains through faith in Christ Jesus will do anything.

A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger else it must be pressed small like Chinese feet, her happiness is to be made as cakes are by a fixed recipe.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement much disputation and yet more personal liking.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory and think that such killing is no murder.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us you know, it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.