GEORGE HENRY LEWES QUOTES III

English philosopher & literary critic (1817-1878)

Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Problems of Life and Mind

Tags: experience


The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature

Tags: books


Men living always in groups cooperate like the organs in an organism. Their actions have a common impulse and a common end. Their desires and opinions bear the common stamp of an impersonal direction. Much of their life is common to all. The roads, market-places and temples, are for each and all. The experiences, the dogmas, and the doctrines are for each and all. Customs arise, and are formulated in laws, the restraint of all. The customs, born of the circumstances, immanent in the social conditions, are consciously extricated and prescribed as the rules of life; each new generation is born in this social medium, and has to adapt itself to the established forms.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Problems of Life and Mind

Tags: society


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

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature

Tags: opinion


To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Lives and Works of Goethe

Tags: love


Over the meeting of the lovers I draw a veil. The burst of rapture with which they clasped each other in a wild embrace -- the many inquiries -- the fond regrets and thrilling hopes -- it is out of my power to convey. Let me, therefore, leave them to their happiness.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Ranthorpe


Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature

Tags: literature