George Meredith Quotes (45 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

George Meredith

George Meredith: 45 quotes5 likes

Famous George Meredith Quotes

“I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.”

George Meredith book The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 1.

“A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.”

George Meredith book Diana of the Crossways

Ch. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=pDlxjZ-z-woC&q=%22A+witty+woman+is+a+treasure+a+witty+beauty+is+a+power%22&pg=PA2#v=onepage. Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885)

“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

Prelude. The Egoist http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/egost11.txt (1879)

“In…the book of Egoism, it is written, possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.”

George Meredith

Source: The Egoist http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/egost11.txt (1879), Ch. 14.

“Kissing don't last; cookery do!”

George Meredith

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 28.

“Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.”

George Meredith

Ch. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=n2g-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Who+rises+from+prayer+a+better+man+his+prayer+is+answered%22&pg=PA75#v=onepage. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859)

George Meredith Quotes about love

“For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.”

George Meredith

The Lark Ascending http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/lark_ascending.htm, l. 65-70 (1881).

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

George Meredith

Love in the Valley http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/love_valley.htm, st. 2 (1883).

“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

Juggling Jerry, st. 9 (1859).

“First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill.”

George Meredith

Phoebus with Admetus st. 3.

“What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,
And all that draweth on the tomb for text.
Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun:
Beneath whose light the shadow loses form.
We are the lords of life, and life is warm.
Intelligence and instinct now are one.
But nature says: 'My children most they seem
When they least know me: therefore I decree
That they shall suffer.' Swift doth young Love flee,
And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
Then if we study Nature we are wise.”

George Meredith

St. 30. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

George Meredith Quotes about life

“In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.”

George Meredith

St. 43. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! -
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!”

George Meredith

St. 50. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.”

George Meredith

Hard Weather, l. 71 (1888).

George Meredith Quotes

“God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!”

George Meredith

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 33.

“Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.”

George Meredith

Source: The Egoist http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/egost11.txt (1879), Ch. 7.

“Cannon his name,
Cannon his voice, he came.”

George Meredith

Napoléon, I (1898).

“Speech is the small change of Silence.”

George Meredith

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 34.

“And if I drink oblivion of a day,
So shorten I the stature of my soul.”

George Meredith

St. 12. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“See ye not, Courtesy
Is the true Alchemy,
Turning to gold all it touches and tries?”

George Meredith

The Song of Courtesy https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1381/1381-h/1381-h.htm#page129, IV (1859).

“Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.”

George Meredith

The Woods of Westermain http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-woods-of-westermain/, st. 1 (1883).

“The actors are, it seems, the usual three:
Husband and wife and lover.”

George Meredith

St. 25. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“With patient inattention hear him prate.”

George Meredith

Bellerophon, st. 4 (1887).

“But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes
That look on it! the diverse things they see!”

George Meredith

A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-ballad-of-fair-ladies-in-revolt/ st. 16 (1883).

“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

Love in the Valley, st. 5.

“"How divine is utterance!" she said. "As we to the brutes, poets are to us."”

George Meredith

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 16.

“All wisdom's armoury this man could wield”

George Meredith

The Sage Enamoured (1892).

“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

Juggling Jerry http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6583&poem=26458, st. 7 (1859).

“What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.”

George Meredith

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 1.

“On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend.”

George Meredith

Lucifer in Starlight http://www.george-macdonald.com/meredith/lucifer.htm, l. 1-2 (1883).

“The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.”

George Meredith

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 19.

“Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too.”

George Meredith

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 2.

“Full lasting is the song, though he,
The singer, passes”

George Meredith

The Thrush in February, st. 17 (1888).

“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

The Lark Ascending, l. 95-100.

“How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
When others pick it up, becomes a gem!”

George Meredith

St. 41. Compare: "Once in a golden hour / I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed", Alfred Tennyson, The Flower. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“The well of true wit is truth itself.”

George Meredith

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 1.

“There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.”

George Meredith

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 18.

“More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
Utterly this fair garden we might win.”

George Meredith

St. 48. Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)

“Into the breast that gives the rose,
Shall I with shuddering fall?”

George Meredith

Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/MeredithPoems1/00000087.htm, st. 13 (1862).