George Eliot

"A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge...She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation...She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them.  In conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you can't understand her.  She does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence."