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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.

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
Done
Understood
Always
Effects
Produce
Expression
Literature
Art
Condemnation
Ends
Aim
Anything
Effect

More quotes by George Henry Lewes

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If a work of art is placed before me, I believe I can enjoy it but I do not overlook the fact, that Art is one thing, another thing Amusement and that people do like amusements, and will run after it.
George Henry Lewes
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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.
George Henry Lewes
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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.
George Henry Lewes
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Roger Bacon, a disciple of the Arabs, also insisted on the primary necessity of Mathematics, without which no other science can be known yet by Mathematics it is clear that he meant something very different from what we mean, including under that head even dancing, singing, gesticulation, and performance on musical instruments.
George Henry Lewes
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The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief
George Henry Lewes
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The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.
George Henry Lewes
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Ideas are forces our acceptance of one determines our reception of others.
George Henry Lewes
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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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Over the meeting of the lovers I draw a veil. The burst of rapture with which they clasped each other in a wild embrace -- the many inquiries -- the fond regrets and thrilling hopes -- it is out of my power to convey. Let me, therefore, leave them to their happiness.
George Henry Lewes
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No deeply rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse judgment. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic.
George Henry Lewes
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In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is every where. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle.
George Henry Lewes
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It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.
George Henry Lewes
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Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.
George Henry Lewes
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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.
George Henry Lewes
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Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
George Henry Lewes
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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.
George Henry Lewes
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To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had expected. Such a teacher could no longer allure him.
George Henry Lewes
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Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.
George Henry Lewes
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Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
George Henry Lewes
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Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.
George Henry Lewes