Explore Quotes by George Henry Lewes

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

Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed.

The superiority of one mind over another depends on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised.

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

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

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

Insight is the first condition of Art.

Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

Science is not addressed to poets.

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

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

Heart and Brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge.

Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be silent.

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

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

The artist is called a creator.

Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.

Sincerity is moral truth.