I just returned from lecturing in Bulgaria and vacationing on Cape Cod. I took the latter opportunity to read, for the first time, George Eliot's magnificent novel Middlemarch. It crackles with wise insights. Here are just a few:

"Wise in his daily work was he:
To fruits of diligence,
And not to faiths or polity,
He plied his utmost sense.
These perfect in their little parts,
Whose work is all their prize --
Without them how could laws, or arts,
Or towered cities rise?" [Chap. 40]
....

"I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands." [Chap. 39]
....

".... there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus." [Chap. 46]