George Eliot

"Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are."

"In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause."

"Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through."

"All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other."

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."

"And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment."

"Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love."

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."

"Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet."

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

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

"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure."

"I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved."

"I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best."

"In every parting there is an image of death."

"Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?"

"Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face."

"Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty."

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them."

"Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive."

"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."

"The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best."

"The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another."

"There are many victories worse than a defeat."

"There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows."

"We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything."

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

"When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity."

"When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity."