Quotes by George Lewes

• Sincerity is moral truth.
• Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
• No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.
• Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.
• Personal experience is the basis of all real Literature.
• 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.
• Science is not addressed to poets.
• Science is the systematic classification of experience.
• Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed.
• Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be silent.
• The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.
• The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.
• The only cure for grief is action.
• The public can only be really moved by what is genuine.
• The superiority of one mind over another depends on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised.
• Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
• We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.
• Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
• 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.
• All great authors are seers.
• Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.
• Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.
• A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.
• All good Literature rests primarily on insight.
• As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.
• Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.
• Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.
• 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.
• Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.
• Good writers are of necessity rare.
• 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.
• In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.
• In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable.
• Insight is the first condition of Art.
• Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.
• All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.
• Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.
• It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.
• If you feel yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height of your argument.