Jubal sat lonely, all around was dim, Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him - George Eliot

You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that — if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is — I wouldn’t give twopence for him’ — here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers — ‘whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading. And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know.