Quote

The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

George Henry Lewes

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George Henry Lewes
Age: 61 †
Born: 1817
Born: April 18
Died: 1878
Died: November 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Theatre Critic
Writer
London
England
Writer
Distinguished
Grandest
Language
Simplest
Blending
Use
Plain
Triviality
Artist
Uses
Homely
Without
Precisely
Elevated
Great
Phrases
Suggestion
Tells
Selective
Ornate
Instinct
Suggestions
Imperceptible

More quotes by George Henry Lewes

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Good writers are of necessity rare.
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All good Literature rests primarily on insight.
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Heart and Brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge.
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Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.
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Originality is independence, not rebellion it is sincerity, not antagonism.
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If you feel yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height of your argument.
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Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
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The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.
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Sincerity is moral truth.
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I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.
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To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.
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There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
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Ideas are forces our acceptance of one determines our reception of others.
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Remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.
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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 danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.
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The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.
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It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.
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The artist is called a creator.
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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.
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Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.
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