George Eliot

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.