Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. - George Eliot

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

Selfish — a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.