"She wanted something more, though she did not know, could not think what it was she wanted."

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"Go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and gardens, and everything lovely."

— Virginia Woolf

"It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at the light) as for oneself."

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others."

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"She often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions."

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"She's no more aware of her beauty than a child."

— Virginia Woolf, The Lighthouse

"I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?"

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbours think they are."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world. But it is easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends who love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far as it lies in their power. "

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"'You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other thing is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else. You must have 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.'"

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"I try not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for others, and I have too much already."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"You are a poem — and that is to be the best part of a poet — what makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion — a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"I should like to make life beautiful — I mean everybody's life."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]

"I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine — something like being blind, while people talk of the sky."

— George Eliot, Middlemarch [1871]