This book is an anthology of quotes from George Eliot and selected facts about George Eliot. It grants her reflections on subjects ranging from Love to Meaning of Life:
“The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”
“Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.”
“Adventure is not outside man; it is within.”
“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.”
“A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.”
“The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.”
“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.”
“A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.”
“Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.”
“A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.”
“All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.”