George Saintsbury Quotes

• The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

  George Saintsbury

  Exercise, Italian, Atmosphere

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.44, tredition

  45 Copy quote

• The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

  George Saintsbury

  Appreciation, Differences, Hardest

  George Saintsbury (2008). “Notes on a Cellar-Book”, p.236, Univ of California Press

  8 Copy quote

• I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

  George Saintsbury

  Food, Thinking, Cooking

  7 Copy quote

• When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

  George Saintsbury

  Writing, People, Literature

  George Saintsbury (1950). “A Last Vintage: Essays and Papers”

  7 Copy quote

• It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.

  George Saintsbury

  Beauty, Drinking, Race

  George Saintsbury (1963). “Notes on a cellar-book”

  9 Copy quote

• When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

  George Saintsbury

  Book, Wine, People

  George Saintsbury (2008). “Notes on a Cellar-Book”, p.30, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

  George Saintsbury

  Humor, Savages, Curious

  George Saintsbury (1950). “A Last Vintage: Essays and Papers”

  11 Copy quote

• Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.

  George Saintsbury

  Criticism, World, Endeavour

  George Saintsbury, Foreword By Mohit K. Ray (2004). “History Of English Criticism”, p.535, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

  5 Copy quote

• But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

  George Saintsbury

  Melancholy, Century, Whole

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.162, tredition

  7 Copy quote

• Alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy.

  George Saintsbury

  Alcohol, Soul, Body

  George Saintsbury (1963). “Notes on a cellar-book”

  17 Copy quote

• We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire.

  George Saintsbury

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  "A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day" by George Saintsbury, the first US edition; New York: Dodd, Meads, (Vol. 1, pp. 4-5), (1900-04).

  4 Copy quote

• But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat - it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older - as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast.

  George Saintsbury

  Flirting, Thinking, Meals

  George Saintsbury (1922). “A Scrap Book”

  4 Copy quote

• Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.

  George Saintsbury

  Thank God, Facts, Rejoice

  George Saintsbury (1924). “A Last Scrap Book”

  4 Copy quote

• So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge.

  George Saintsbury

  Three

  George Saintsbury, Foreword By Mohit K. Ray (2004). “History Of English Criticism”, p.350, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

  4 Copy quote

• The Book of History is the Bible of Irony.

  George Saintsbury

  Book, Irony

  George Saintsbury, Oliver Elton, Adam Blyth Webster (1945). “George Saintsbury: The Memorial Volume : a New Collection of His Essays and Papers”

  4 Copy quote

• Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage.

  George Saintsbury

  Savages, Oratory, Literature

  George Saintsbury (1934). “A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day”

  4 Copy quote

• Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

  George Saintsbury

  Majority, Reason, Ifs

  George Saintsbury (1950). “A Last Vintage: Essays and Papers”

  4 Copy quote

• But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

  George Saintsbury

  Giving, Style, Gold

  George Saintsbury (1913). “The English Novel”

  7 Copy quote

• One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.

  George Saintsbury

  Names, Two, Lateness

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.11, tredition

  56 Copy quote

• But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

  George Saintsbury

  Latin, Writing, Men

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.27, tredition

  8 Copy quote

• The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

  George Saintsbury

  Artist, Giving, Transition

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.209, tredition

  17 Copy quote

• To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much.

  George Saintsbury

  Romance, Mind, Division

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.13, tredition

  10 Copy quote

• Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

  George Saintsbury

  Missing, Novelists, Ordinary

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.234, tredition

  7 Copy quote

• The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.

  George Saintsbury

  Romance, Stories, West

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.11, tredition

  7 Copy quote

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