George Eliot

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

I__e always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.

Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

Don't judge a book by its cover

She handled it (her trade) with all the grace that belongs to mastery.

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.

Her own misery filled her heart__here was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men__ dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.

How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?