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.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.