George Henry Lewes Quotes

The superiority of one mind over another depends on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised.

To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it.

To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.

In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is every where. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life ; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle.

We are not judicious in love; we do not select those whom we ought to love, but those whom we cannot help loving.

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.

If a work of art is placed before me, I believe I can enjoy it; but I do not overlook the fact, that Art is one thing, another thing Amusement; and that people do like amusements, and will run after it.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

Endeavour to be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your thought, your style will be beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the expression will be moving.

In urging all writers to be steadfast in reliance on the ultimate victory of excellence, we should no less strenuously urge upon them to beware of the intemperate arrogance which attributes failure to a degraded condition of the public mind. The instinct which leads the world to worship success is not dangerous. The book which succeeds accomplishes its aim. The book which fails may have many excellencies, but they must have been misdirected.

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.

To one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.

It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.

Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

If I advance new views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to have many adherents among minds altogether unprepared for such views; yet it is certain that even those who most fiercely oppose me will recognize the power of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very novelty will challenge attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have any real insight.

The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced
that without intelligence we should be brutes
but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.

It is not enough that a man has clearness of vision, and reliance on sincerity, he must also have the art of expression, or he will remain obscure.

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.

I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.

Heart and Brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge.

The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.

Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.

Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears.

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.

Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.

Roger Bacon, a disciple of the Arabs, also insisted on the primary necessity of Mathematics, without which no other science can be known; yet by Mathematics it is clear that he meant something very different from what we mean, including under that head even dancing, singing, gesticulation, and performance on musical instruments.

The public can only be really moved by what is genuine.

Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.

The air is crowded with birds
beautiful, tender, intelligent birds
to whom life is a song.

The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.

Metaphysical ghosts cannot be killed, because they cannot be touched; but they may be dispelled by dispelling the twilight in which shadows and solidities are easily confounded. The Vital Principle is an entity of this ghostly kind; and although the daylight has dissipated it, and positive Biology is no longer vexed with its visitations, it nevertheless reappears in another shape in the shadowy region of mystery which surrounds biological and all other questions.

The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar.

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

Vehemence without feeling is but rant.

The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

If the members of a class do not understand
if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognize a power in the voice
surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed in the attempt.

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

No deeply rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse judgment. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic

Science is not addressed to poets.

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols.

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men.

Good writers are of necessity rare.

Sincerity is moral truth.

In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable.

Love is blind; couch not his eyes.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight.

The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief

Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be silent.

Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.

I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?

Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature
which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions
these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term experience.

In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect-its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions-its purpose being pleasure.

A cell is regarded as the true biological atom.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.