George Eliot

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.

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.

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

To judge wisely, we must know how things appear to the unwise.

Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power . . . but then, so should every other living creature.

. . . said of the pitfalls of scrutinizing oneself too closely: 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.

There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. . . . It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle. . . .

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

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.