George Meredith Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

In... the book of Egoism, it is written, possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.

George Meredith
I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

George Meredith
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.

George Meredith
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers.

George Meredith
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend.

George Meredith
I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

George Meredith
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.

George Meredith
Lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire.

George Meredith
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.

George Meredith
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly, and eat our pot of honey on the grave.

George Meredith
Into the breast that gives the rose,
Shall I with shuddering fall?

George Meredith
And if I drink oblivion of a day,
So shorten I the stature of my soul.

George Meredith
Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.

George Meredith
It seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves.

George Meredith
God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!

George Meredith
There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.

George Meredith
The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.

George Meredith
Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

George Meredith
More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
Utterly this fair garden we might win.

George Meredith
Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of laws.

George Meredith
The light of every soul burns upward. Of course, most of them are candles in the wind. Let us allow for atmospheric disturbance.

George Meredith
Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth:
We have it only when we are half earth.

George Meredith
[Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dullness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness yet to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher.

George Meredith
I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
Close, and I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy;
Most, a dash between the two.

George Meredith
A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that...

George Meredith