George Henry Lewes
George Henry Lewes
George Henry Leweswas an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious skepticism. However, he is perhaps best known today for having openly lived with Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen-name George Eliot, as soulmates whose life and writings were enriched by their relationship, despite never marrying...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 April 1817
George Henry Lewes quotes about
writing science library
Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.
hygiene progress literature
Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.
hygiene literature objects
The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.
science vision facts
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.
heart two brain
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.
literature insight good-literature
All good Literature rests primarily on insight.
running talent murder
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
spontaneity individual
Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.
amplification wealth rhetorical
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
wise men often-is
It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it.
writing desire done
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.
among familiar men objects ordinary
Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.
commonly effective
Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed.
mind
The superiority of one mind over another depends on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised.