While the arm is strong to strike and heave, — George Eliot

"Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self."

"the rich ate and drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families . . ."

"Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart."

"More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us."

"So soon as Squire Casss standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the village to Mr. Osgoods, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Casss."

"Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?"