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.
My religion of life is always to be cheerful.
Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of laws.
Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her.
In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.
Days, when the ball of our vision Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun; When the graps on the bow was decision, And arrow and hand and eye were one; When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, Came heaving for rapture ahead! - Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer As lights over mounds of the dead.
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
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.
Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them.
Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself.
Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.
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.
Observation is the most enduring of the pleasures of life.
Published memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity, and that he acknowledges the end.
As we to the brutes, poets are to us.