It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.

... in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.

If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas.

... one's own faults are always a heavy chain to drag through life and one can't help groaning under the weight now and then.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

And Dorothea..she had no dreams of being praised above other women. Feeling that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better, her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and on all those Dorotheas who life faithfully their hidden lives and rest in unvisited tombs. Middlemarch

... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.