1,496 Quotes by George Eliot

You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope?

the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.

Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.

Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

... happy husbands and wives can hear each other say the same thing over and over again without being tired.

One of the tortures of jealousy is, that it can never turn away its eyes from the thing that pains it.