"We can no longer be content with refuting our opponents; we are also bound to explain them. The vitality of any doctrine supposed to be erroneous proves that it cannot be entirely erroneous."
Sir Leslie Stephen was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, mountaineer, and an Ethical movement activist. He was also the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and the founder of England's Dictionary of National Biography.
"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"A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance."
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"He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view."
Leslie Stephen"Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens."
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