I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.

But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.

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

There are robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer.

I wish always to be quoted as George Eliot.