George Eliot
The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
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.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
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.
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
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.
The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
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.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
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.
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
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.
Breed is stronger than pasture.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
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.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.Collection: Too Late
Steady work turns genius to a loom.Collection: Genius
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.Collection: Happiness
All things except reason and order are possible with a mob.Collection: Order
It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.Collection: Inspirational
The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness.Collection: Light
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.Collection: Love
The sweetest of all success is that which one wins by hard exertion.Collection: Success
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.Collection: Friendship
There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.Collection: Phrases
Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.Collection: Fishes
Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.Collection: Best Friend
Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.Collection: People
Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters.Collection: Genius
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.Collection: Inspirational
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.Collection: Music
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.Collection: Country
It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.Collection: Spring
She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.Collection: Struggle
You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.Collection: Feelings
But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!Collection: Ambition