George Eliot

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel a responsibility for the actions of others."

"I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine."

"If we only looked on Sundays, we might think all virtue dwelt among the clergy."

"Much of my reading is of the kind that is called light reading—that which one reads in solitude, purely for pleasure."

"It is impossible to spend life so as to prevent the approach of death."

"The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history."

"If we are to have any spiritual life at all, we must cultivate simplicity."

"Every man had a niche in the social structure where his talents were expected to flourish."

"The very desire for what is true and good is the most sacred of all desires."

"To love is not to possess but to set free."

"The highest function of the teacher is to make the pupil think."

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

"Beautiful things pass away that sordid things might take their place."

"The impiety of this age is not that of indifference, but of presumption."

"Greatness is not a matter of circumstance, but of choice."

"The common habit of suppressing her own wants teaches a woman to suppress them till she loses consciousness that she has any."

"First-rate novelist that life is, no fiction can match the complexity of human experience."

"Our deeds are not like children that are born and left; they live continually in our world."

"It is rare to find leisure that is not fatigue and solitude that is not gloom."

"Men's natures are not radically bad; they have all a quickness of conscience."

"There is a golden thread that runs through all our actions and all our sufferings."

"The capacity for moral growth is the only thing that justifies existence."

"Intellectual companionship is the highest form of intimacy."

"The meaning we make of our suffering is what transforms it into wisdom."

"We cannot live only by our consciences; we must also live by our instincts."

"Jealousy is the root of all evil, but also of all virtue."

"The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

"Science is a great corrective to the presumption and egoism of individuals and nations."

"How little we know of the way in which our lives are shaped by the small choices we make daily."

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see only sands beneath them."