George Eliot

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

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

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

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold in the heart.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

The years seem to rush by now and I think of death as a fast approaching end of a journey-double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day.

Time like money is measured by our needs.

Music sweeps by me as a messenger carrying a message that is not for me.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good and we must hunger for them.

Men's men: be they gentle or simple they're much of a muchness.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust.

What makes life dreary is want of motive.

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again.