George Henry Lewes Quotes

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

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

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
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.

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

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle, is necessarily ignorant of all natural things....Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion....He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
Mathematicians and philosophers resist the notion of Mathematics being classed among the sciences of observation and experiment; a classification which is supposed to degrade Mathematics from its supreme position, arid to introduce contingency into its results.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
Generations follow generations; and the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the Present the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life.

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

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running.

George Henry Lewes
Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes. But those who have had ample opportunities of intimately knowing the growth of works in the minds of artists, will bear me out in saying that a vivid memory supplies the elements from a thousand different sources, most of which are quite beyond the power of localisation, the experience of yesterday being strangely intermingled with the dim suggestions of early years, the tones heard in childhood sounding through the diapason of sorrowing maturity; and all these kaleidoscopic fragments are recomposed into images that seem to have a corresponding reality of their own.

George Henry Lewes
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 work of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the Intellect, and a work of Science will also indirectly appeal to the Feelings; nevertheless a poem on the stars and a treatise on astronomy have distinct aims and distinct methods. But having recognised the broadly-marked differences, we are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. Logic and Imagination belong equally to both. It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities.

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

George Henry Lewes
Foolish critics often betray their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what he has seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that no man imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the selection of the characteristic details that the artistic power is manifested.

George Henry Lewes
An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have clear conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us: in this case he has imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear Vision no skill can avail. Imperfect Vision necessitates imperfect representation; words take the place of ideas.

George Henry Lewes
The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

George Henry Lewes
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.

George Henry Lewes
Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed. To take a trifling example: If for some reason I cannot, or do not, choose to verify a quotation which may be useful to my purpose, what is to prevent my saying that the quotation is taken at second-hand? It is true, if my quotations are for the most part second-hand and are acknowledged as such, my erudition will appear scanty. But it will only appear what it is. Why should I pretend to an erudition which is not mine? Sincerity forbids it.

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

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

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

George Henry Lewes