George Meredith Famous Quotes & Sayings

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
I would speak my heart out heaven is my need. — George Meredith

Sentimentalists are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done. — George Meredith

Chance works for us when we are good captains. — George Meredith

She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! — George Meredith

Heiresses are never jilted. — George Meredith

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. — George Meredith

Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay. — George Meredith

Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting
Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,
Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter
Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.
Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom
Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend
Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset
Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. — George Meredith

Published memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity, and that he acknowledges the end. — George Meredith

When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks ... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable. — George Meredith

The season of love is the carnival of egoism and it brings a touchstone to our natures. — George Meredith

A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly, and eat our pot of honey on the grave. — George Meredith

Lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire. — George Meredith

The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts. — George Meredith

Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. — George Meredith

I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. — George Meredith

How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up, becomes a gem! — George Meredith

Poetry is talking on tiptoe. — George Meredith

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism. — George Meredith

Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them. — George Meredith

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!-
Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.
-Ode to Youth and Memory — George Meredith

What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature. — George Meredith

See ye not, Courtesy is the true Alchemy, turning to gold all it touches and tries? — George Meredith

Caricature is rough truth. — George Meredith

It's past parsons to console us: No, nor no doctor fetch for me: I can die without my bolus; Two of a trade, lass, never agree! Parson and Doctor!
don't they love rarely Fighting the devil in other men's fields! Stand up yourself and match him fairly: Then see how the rascal yields! — George Meredith

Why mayn't they do what men do?' the Hero cried impetuously. 'I hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It's that that makes the ruin and horrors I see. Why mayn't they do what men do? I like the women who are brave enough not to be hypocrites. By Heaven! if these women are bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show, and deceive you in the end. — George Meredith

Speech is the small change of silence. — George Meredith

We are betrayed by what is false within — George Meredith

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man. — George Meredith

The man or country that fights priestcraft and priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere. — George Meredith

Not till the fire is dying in the grate, Look we for any kinship with the stars. — George Meredith

Observation is the most enduring of the pleasures of life. — George Meredith

The debts we owe ourselves are the hardest to pay. — George Meredith

There is nothing the body suffers the soul may not profit by. — George Meredith

Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks. — George Meredith

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two. — George Meredith

Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts. — George Meredith

Full lasting is the song, though he, / The singer, passes. — George Meredith

The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it. — George Meredith

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see. — George Meredith

George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality. — George Meredith

O have a care of natures that are mute! — George Meredith

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power. — George Meredith

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life! — George Meredith

Behold the life at ease; it drifts, The sharpened life commands its course. — George Meredith

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination. — George Meredith

She [Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. — George Meredith

The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one spirit voice. — George Meredith

Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself. — George Meredith

The man of science is nothing if not a poet gone wrong. — George Meredith

A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that ... — George Meredith

Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity. — George Meredith

A dainty rogue in porcelain — George Meredith

My religion of life is always to be cheerful. — George Meredith

Earth, the mother of all, Moves on her stedfast way, Gathering, flinging, sowing. Mortals, we live in her day, She in her children is growing. — George Meredith

Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. — George Meredith

It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him — George Meredith

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. — George Meredith

Jealousy is love bed of burning snarl. — George Meredith

Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. — George Meredith

God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! — George Meredith

We know the degree of refinement in people by the matter they laugh at and the ring of the laugh. — George Meredith

A house with a great wine stored below lives in our imagination as a joyful house, fast and splendidly rooted in the soil. — George Meredith

They were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted. She listened gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where a voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an attentive listener. — George Meredith

Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to die for each other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment — George Meredith

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered. — George Meredith

She poured a little social sewage into his ears. — George Meredith

The well of true wit is truth itself. — George Meredith

Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two. — George Meredith

For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which over flows
To lift us with him as he goes. — George Meredith

We never know what's in us till we stand by ourselves (George Meredith, ORF) — George Meredith

Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers. — George Meredith

Don't just count your years, make your years count. — George Meredith

And if I drink oblivion of a day, / So shorten I the stature of my soul. — George Meredith

There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by. — George Meredith

That rarest gift to Beauty, Common Sense! — George Meredith

Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. — George Meredith