George Eliot

"All the philosophy in the world cannot change the human heart."

"The years have not been kind to me, but they have not been entirely hard."

"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand."

"What is the particular virtue of the form of virtue or holiness that consists in putting off marriage?"

"The great work of life consists in the growing knowledge of the nature of our souls."

"Life is too short to have time for fools."

"I should not mind anything if it were turned backward and the past made better."

"Affection, ambition, and vanity are the words that express the essence of human existence."

"The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and if the beautiful be moral, then it loses nothing in moral estimation."

"I wish it to be remembered that I was the last to confess a truth and the first to forget it."

"Every moment has its sorrow and its joy."

"People are not worse than the fact of their position makes them."

"I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me."

"The heart has its language which reason does not understand."

"Nature is not exact."

"The universe has no such thing as a straight line."

"The more I see of men, the more I like dogs."

"Art is the effort of man to express not his idea of what nature is, but his idea of what it should be."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"Rosy cheeks speak well for a woman, but not so well as they do for a peach."

"Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering."

"Time is the subtle thief of youth."

"To have in general but little feeling seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion."

"I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense."

"Friendship is not something that can exist between people if they cannot tolerate differences."

"Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it."

"Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will."

"Sorrow is better than fear."

"The great epochs of our life are at the price of visions."

"What makes life precious is its uncertainty."