Top 80 George Henry Lewes Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men.”

— George Henry Lewes

52. “Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.”

— George Henry Lewes

53. “All good Literature rests primarily on insight.”

— George Henry Lewes

54. “Vehemence without feeling is but rant.”

— George Henry Lewes

55. “No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.”

— George Henry Lewes

56. “Science is not addressed to poets.”

— George Henry Lewes

57. “All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.”

— George Henry Lewes

58. “Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.”

— George Henry Lewes

59. “In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable.”

— George Henry Lewes

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

— George Henry Lewes

61. “Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.”

— George Henry Lewes

62. “Good writers are of necessity rare.”

— George Henry Lewes

63. “It is not enough that a man has clearness of vision, and reliance on sincerity, he must also have the art of expression, or he will remain obscure.”

— George Henry Lewes

64. “The intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power.”

— George Henry Lewes

65. “It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.”

— George Henry Lewes

66. “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.”

— George Henry Lewes

67. “The public can only be really moved by what is genuine.”

— George Henry Lewes

68. “The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer’s mind.”

— George Henry Lewes

69. “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.”

— George Henry Lewes

70. “The history of the race is but that of the individual “writ large”.”

— George Henry Lewes

71. “In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect-its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions-its purpose being pleasure.”

— George Henry Lewes

72. “A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.”

— George Henry Lewes

73. “The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.”

— George Henry Lewes

74. “Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.”

— George Henry Lewes

75. “The artist is called a creator...”

— George Henry Lewes

76. “To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.”

— George Henry Lewes

77. “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

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

— George Henry Lewes

79. “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.”

— George Henry Lewes

80. “A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief.”

— George Henry Lewes

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

— George Henry Lewes

82. “The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief.”

— George Henry Lewes

83. “It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.”

— George Henry Lewes

84. “If a work of art is placed before me, I believe I can enjoy it; but I do not overlook the fact, that Art is one thing, another thing Amusement; and that people do like amusements, and will run after it.”

— George Henry Lewes

85. “Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination.”

— George Henry Lewes