George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans], 1819-80, English novelist Quotes

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.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change -- only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: -- in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer -- committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -- one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

Better a false belief than no belief at all.

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to revere.

But is it what we love, or how we love, that makes true good?

Might, could, would -- they are contemptible auxiliaries.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities -- a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces -- a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.