When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written. — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat - it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority. — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast. — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write… — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
“Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it.” — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist. — George Saintsbury Copy Share Image
