George Meredith, OM (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
The man who has no mind of his own lends it to the priests.
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.
The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.
But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see.
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!
A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that. . .
Caricature is rough truth.
We are betrayed by what is false within
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
She [Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook.
Sentimentalists are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done.
It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him
Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.
Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers.
How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up, becomes a gem!
When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks. . . But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.
Earth, the mother of all, Moves on her stedfast way, Gathering, flinging, sowing. Mortals, we live in her day, She in her children is growing.
Poetry is talking on tiptoe.
Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts.