George Henry Lewes

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

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 …

Minds differ in the vividness with which they recall the elements of previous experience

If clear Vision be indispensable to success in Art, all means of securing that clearness should be sought.

An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds …

I wish to call special attention to the psychological fact, that fairies and demons, remote as they are from experience, are not created by a more vigorous effort of imagination than milk maids and poachers. The intensity of vision in the …

Foolish critics often betray their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what he has seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that no man imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the …

A work is imaginative in virtue of the power of its images over our emotions; not in virtue of any rarity or surprisingness in the images themselves.

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.

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.

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.

It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities.

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.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities.

as the life of nations becomes more complex, Thought assumes a more imperial character; and Literature, in its widest sense, becomes a delicate index of social evolution.

In the development of the great series of animal organisms, the Nervous System assumes more and more of an imperial character.

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

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 …

The only cure for grief is action.

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

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

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

The greatest artist is he who is greatest in the highest reaches of his art, even although he may lack the qualities necessary for the adequate execution of some minor details. It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we …

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.