George Henry Lewes famous quotes

Science is the systematic classification of experience.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Science #Systematic #Classification

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Uprising #Independence #Originality

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Education #Philosophy #Principles

No man ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Smart #Exercise #Men

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Art #Mind #Vision

The public can only be really moved by what is genuine.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Genuine #Moved

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Life #Beauty #Wisdom

Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Strength #Errors #Weakness

The only cure for grief is action.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Motivational #Self Esteem #Grief

Endeavour to be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your thought, your style will be beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the expression will be moving.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Beautiful #Real #Moving

The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced -- that without intelligence we should be brutes -- but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Character #Eye #Sacrifice

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

#Men #Enthusiasm #Belief

Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature -- which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Taste #Opinion #Human Nature

Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Safe #Immortality #Streams

The intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Artist #Vision #Tests

I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?
-- George Henry Lewes

#Character #Play #Wife

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

#Running #Art #Believe

If I advance new views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to have many adherents among minds altogether unprepared for such views; yet it is certain that even those who most fiercely oppose me will recognize the power of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very novelty will challenge attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have any real insight.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Philosophy #Real #Echoes

Our native susceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the many qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be most clearly recalled. One man remembers the combustible properties of a substance, which to another is memorable for its polarising property; to one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Memorable #Men #Water

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

#Art #Science #Purpose

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

#Logic #Argument #Judgment

The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Artist #Suggestions #Phrases

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Science #Giving #Able

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Art #Philosophy #Imagination

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

#Amplification #Wealth #Rhetorical

Whatever you believe to be true and false, that proclaim to be true and false; whatever you think admirable and beautiful, that should be your model, even if all your friends and all the critics storm at you as a crotchet-monger and an eccentric.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Beautiful #Believe #Thinking

The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
-- George Henry Lewes

#Race #Individual

If the members of a class do not understand -- if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognize a power in the voice -- surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed in the attempt.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Lying #Class #Voice

In urging all writers to be steadfast in reliance on the ultimate victory of excellence, we should no less strenuously urge upon them to beware of the intemperate arrogance which attributes failure to a degraded condition of the public mind. The instinct which leads the world to worship success is not dangerous. The book which succeeds accomplishes its aim. The book which fails may have many excellencies, but they must have been misdirected.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Book #Arrogance #Mind

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

#Lying #Data #Principles

Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Historical #Doctrine #Spirit

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

#Character #Men #Palaces

Remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Beautiful #Rain #Fall

It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Running #Believe #Men

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions--these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term "experience.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Race #Unity #Intuition

A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Sympathy #Men #Brave

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Silence #Insincerity #Justification

In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Effort #Adequate #May

Pliny... makes the statement, and for untrustworthiness of statement he cannot easily be surpassed.
-- George Henry Lewes

To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had expected. Such a teacher could no longer allure him.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Teacher #Plato #Disappointment

There is one basis of science," says Descartes , "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Real #Mistake #Order

Roger Bacon expressed a feeling which afterwards moved many minds, when he said that if he had the power he would burn all the works of the Stagirite, since the study of them was not simply loss of time, but multiplication of ignorance. Yet in spite of this outbreak every page is studded with citations from Aristotle, of whom he everywhere speaks in the highest admiration.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Ignorance #Loss #Feelings

Roger Bacon, a disciple of the Arabs, also insisted on the primary necessity of Mathematics, without which no other science can be known; yet by Mathematics it is clear that he meant something very different from what we mean, including under that head even dancing, singing, gesticulation, and performance on musical instruments.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Mean #Dancing #Musical

Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind, rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena, endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Order #Agency #Mind

The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Steps #Inquiry #Analogies

He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle , is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Dark #Law #Ignorant

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

#Writing #Desire #Done

The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Philosophy #Finals #Causes

To one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.
-- George Henry Lewes

#Men #Lovers