Leslie Stephen Quotes & Sayings

The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings. — Leslie Stephen

Chance is a name for our ignorance. — Leslie Stephen

A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. — Leslie Stephen

I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak. — Leslie Stephen

God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation. — Leslie Stephen

If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study. — Leslie Stephen

Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens. — Leslie Stephen

The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood. — Leslie Stephen

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers. — Leslie Stephen

The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking. — Leslie Stephen

Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? — Leslie Stephen

When I ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of discovering that I had never really believed. — Leslie Stephen

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact. — Leslie Stephen

The Agnostic is one who asserts 'what no one denies' that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence. — Leslie Stephen

The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head. — Leslie Stephen

No good story is quite true. — Leslie Stephen

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view. — Leslie Stephen

Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species. — Leslie Stephen

No poetry lives which reflects only the cheerful emotions. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. We can bring harmony out of melancholy; we cannot banish melancholy from the world. And the religious utterances, which are the highest form of poetry, are bound by the same law. There is a deep sadness in the world. — Leslie Stephen

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt. — Leslie Stephen

The poet should touch our heart by showing his own — Leslie Stephen

Genius is a capacity for taking trouble. — Leslie Stephen