“I leave my Generosity to our present Right Worshipful Mayor, T— H—, Esq.”

An ironic bequest aimed at civic self-interest · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Truth

“I leave my Moderation to the Politicians on both sides the question.”

A compact satire on political excess and partisanship · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Truth

“I leave Mr. Clayfield the sincerest thanks my gratitude can give.”

A rare straightforward expression of gratitude amid the satire · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Friendship

“I have an unlucky way of raillery, and when the strong fit of Satire is upon me I spare neither friend nor foe.”

A candid acknowledgement of his indiscriminate satirical impulse · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Friendship
• Truth

“This is the last Will and Testament of me Thomas Chatterton of the City of Bristol; being sound in body, or it is the fault of my last Surgeon.”

Dark humour turns a legal formula into self-mockery · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Death
• Mortality

“Reader judge not; if thou art a Christian—believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power—to that Power alone is he now answerable.”

A grave appeal against judging another person's final fate · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

• Faith
• Mortality
• Truth

“I shall not easily forget a walk through the grounds on one of those tender misty February days when there is a stir and quiver of song in every tree.”

Remembering a landscape where mist, trees and birdsong heightened a sense of mystery · Letter to Mrs Wolfsohn, quoted in Richard Garnett's Memoir (1900)

• Beauty
• Memory
• Nature

“I gasp and pant for want of the proper element to breathe in.”

Extending the image of poetry as the atmosphere necessary to her existence · Letter to Richard Garnett, 2 July 1869

• Art
• Poetry

“My only real intense life has been for a long time in writing, and when I cannot swim and float about in the enchanted waters of poetry I am like a fish out of water.”

Describing poetry as the element in which her inner life could truly breathe · Letter to Richard Garnett, 2 July 1869

• Art
• Poetry

“A rigidity as unnatural as it is dangerous would be the result of too tenacious a clinging to inherited memories.”

Warning against allowing inherited memory to harden into social rigidity · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Memory
• Time
• Truth

“This unwavering faithfulness to the traditions of the past may become a curse to the living.”

Warning that loyalty to inherited tradition can burden the present · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Memory
• Time
• Truth

“All greatness, in her eyes, is not a privilege, but a debt, which entails on its possessor a more strenuous effort, a completer devotion to the service of average humanity.”

Presenting exceptional ability as an obligation to serve ordinary humanity · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Hope
• Truth

“In fact, the one is a theory of life, the other a disease of the soul.”

Distinguishing a lived philosophy from a state of spiritual collapse · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Despair
• Truth

“Her thoughts, instead of being naturally winged with melody, seem mechanically welded into song.”

Contrasting organic musical inspiration with verse that feels technically constructed · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Art
• Music
• Poetry

“From the present she turned to the past, from the native to the foreign, from the domestic to the historical.”

A compact description of an artist deliberately changing imaginative territory · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Art
• Time

“At the same time, it seems, that no progress could well be made in the evolution of society without these departures on the part of individuals from the well-beaten tracks.”

Arguing that departures from convention are necessary to social development · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Freedom
• Hope
• Time

“How far the individual can ever be justified in following the dictates of his private judgment, in opposition to the laws and prevalent opinions of his time and country, must remain a question.”

Framing the conflict between individual conscience and social convention · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Freedom
• Truth

“By his enthusiastic belief in her he gave her the only thing she wanted—a thorough belief in herself.”

Recognising how another person's faith can awaken confidence and creative power · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Art
• Hope
• Love

“Every author usually writes one book, which he might more or less justly entitle 'My Confessions,' into which he pours an intimate part of his life under a thin disguise of fiction.”

Suggesting that one work often contains an author's most intimate disguised self-portrait · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Art
• Memory
• Truth

“They are not studies of life, but life interpreted by the poet's vision.”

Distinguishing poetic vision from mere observation of life · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“But an aphorism, however brilliant, usually contains only one half the truth.”

A warning that even brilliant maxims usually capture only part of reality · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Truth

“There is no reason why the moral ideals of one generation should not become the stepping-stones toward their realisation in another.”

Expressing faith that moral imagination can become social reality across generations · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Hope
• Time
• Truth

“The substance of all poetry has to be extracted mostly from experience.”

Stating experience as the primary substance from which poetry is made · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“It must be confessed that though, as a rule, we know very little of heaven, our experience of hell is pretty considerable.”

A darkly witty reflection on how familiar suffering is to human experience · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Despair
• Mortality