Mary Anne Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, and translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
Keep true. Never be ashamed of doing right. Decide what you think is right and stick to it.
Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence.
It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.
Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.
Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
What is opportunity to the man who can’t use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.
A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
