George Eliot (1819-1880)

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England, where most of her works are set. Her novels are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place, and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Quotes

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life?
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
Our deeds travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Music
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Decisions
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

Pets
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Duty
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

Giving, Money
Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
Can any man or woman choose duties? No more that they can choose their birthplace, or their father or mother.
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
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.