Leslie Stephen

“The Agnostic is one who asserts 'what no one denies' that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence.”

— Leslie Stephen

God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates…

— Leslie Stephen

Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

— Leslie Stephen

Genius is a capacity for taking trouble.

— Leslie Stephen

Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined,…

— Leslie Stephen

The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood.

— Leslie Stephen

“No poetry lives which reflects only the cheerful emotions. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. We can bring…

— Leslie Stephen

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

— Leslie Stephen

When I ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as…

— Leslie Stephen

A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.

— Leslie Stephen

The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his…

— Leslie Stephen

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to…

— Leslie Stephen

“No good story is quite true.”

— Leslie Stephen

If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some…

— Leslie Stephen

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

— Leslie Stephen

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is doing a public service.

— Leslie Stephen

I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong…

— Leslie Stephen

The poet should touch our heart by showing his own

— Leslie Stephen

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to…

— Leslie Stephen

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology…

— Leslie Stephen

The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself,…

— Leslie Stephen

Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men…

— Leslie Stephen

The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the…

— Leslie Stephen

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and…

— Leslie Stephen