George Henry Lewes Quotes

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.

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

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.

A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.

The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object.

In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.

Remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.

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

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

Good writers are of necessity rare.

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.

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.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

Ideas are forces; our acceptance of one determines our reception of others.

Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be silent.

If you feel yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height of your argument.

The only cure for grief is action.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

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

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

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

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

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.

Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination.

All great authors are seers.

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

No man ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.

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

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.

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.

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

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.

Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.

Science is not addressed to poets.

Vehemence without feeling is but rant.

The artist is called a creator.

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

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.

Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.

In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable.

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

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.

A cell is regarded as the true biological atom.

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

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

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