Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Decide on what you think is right, and stick to it.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

I wish always to be quoted as George Eliot.