Leslie Stephen Quotes

• Genius is a capacity for taking trouble.

  Leslie Stephen

  Genius, Trouble, Capacity

  5 Copy quote

• The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head.

  Leslie Stephen

  Thinking, Way, Opinion

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• He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

  Leslie Stephen

  Eye, Views, His Eyes

  Leslie Stephen (1871). “The Playground of Europe”, p.130

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• The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood.

  Leslie Stephen

  Falsehood

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1873). “Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking”, p.361

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• The poet should touch our heart by showing his own

  Leslie Stephen

  Heart, Poet, Should

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1919). “Hours in a Library: Charlotte Brontë. Charles Kingsley. Godwin and Shelley. Gray and his school. Sterne. Country books. George Eliot. Autobiography. Carlyle's ethics. The State trials. Coleridge”

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• Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is doing a public service.

  Leslie Stephen

  Honesty, Men, Thinking

  Leslie Stephen (1893). “An Agnostic's Apology”

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• The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

  Leslie Stephen

  Faith, Religion, Atheism

  Leslie Stephen (1873). “Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking”, p.52

  17 Copy quote

• Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season.

  Leslie Stephen

  Journey, Men, Walking Meditation

  Sir Leslie Stephen (2016). “Studies of a Biographer”, p.462, Library of Alexandria

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• Chance is a name for our ignorance.

  Leslie Stephen

  Ignorance, Names, Chance

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• If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.

  Leslie Stephen

  Profound, Wish, Study

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• A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.

  Leslie Stephen

  Talking, Talkers, Audience

  Leslie Stephen (2011). “Samuel Johnson”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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• Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

  Leslie Stephen

  Delirium Tremens, Hawthorne, Kind

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1875). “Hours in a Library”, p.227

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• Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?

  Leslie Stephen

  Angel, Men, Laughing

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”

  6 Copy quote

• I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.

  Leslie Stephen

  Believe, Men, Mountain Peaks

  Leslie Stephen (2013). “The Playground of Europe”, p.220, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

• When I ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of discovering that I had never really believed.

  Leslie Stephen

  Giving Up, Teaching, Belief

  Frederic William Maitland, Leslie Stephen (2012). “The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen”, p.133, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

• The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

  Leslie Stephen

  Nature, Children, Environment

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• If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt.

  Leslie Stephen

  Thinking, People, Doubt

  The Fortnightly Review, vol. 34, p. 177, 1880.

  86 Copy quote

• Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species.

  Leslie Stephen

  Names, Intellectual, May

  Leslie Stephen (1928). “Sir Thomas Browne. Jonathan Edwards. Horace Walpole. Dr. Johnson's writings. Crabbe. William Hazlitt. Disraeli's novels. Massinger”

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• God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation.

  Leslie Stephen

  Believe, Men, People

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”

  4 Copy quote

• The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking.

  Leslie Stephen

  Journey, Practice, Hiking

  Leslie Stephen (2012). “Studies of a Biographer”, p.265, Cambridge University Press

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