George Henry Lewes

All great authors are seers.

— 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…

— George Henry Lewes

He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle , is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in…

— 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…

— George Henry Lewes

In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is every where. Nature lives:…

— George Henry Lewes

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms,…

— George Henry Lewes

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect;…

— 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…

— 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…

— George Henry Lewes

Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled…

— George Henry Lewes

To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how…

— George Henry Lewes

Insight is the first condition of Art.

— George Henry Lewes

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

— George Henry Lewes

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at…

— George Henry Lewes

To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had…

— 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…

— George Henry Lewes

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.

— George Henry Lewes

No deeply rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse judgment. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by…

— George Henry Lewes

Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.

— George Henry Lewes

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

— 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…

— George Henry Lewes

Character is built out of circumstances. From exactly the same materials, one man builds palaces, while another builds hovels.

— George Henry Lewes

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

— George Henry Lewes

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed.

— George Henry Lewes

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

— George Henry Lewes