Quotes from George Meredith

In… the book of Egoism, it is written, possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.

For singing till his heaven fills,'Tis love of earth that he instills,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cup,And he the wine which over flowsTo lift us with him as he goes.

Behold the life at ease; it drifts,The sharpened life commands its course.

The stench of the trail of Ego in our History. It is ego - ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war.

The man of science is nothing if not a poet gone wrong.

Jealousy is love bed of burning snarl.

What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.

Full lasting is the song, though he,The singer, passes.

With patient inattention hear him prate.

What are we first? First, animals; and nextIntelligences at a leap; on whomPale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

Not till the fire is dying in the grate,Look we for any kinship with the stars.Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,And the great price we pay for it full worth;We have it only when we are half earth.

Behold, in yon stripped Autumn, shivering gray, Earth knows no desolation, She smells regeneration In the moist breath of decay.

[Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dullness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness yet to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher.

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it! The diverse things they see.

There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

Kissing don't last: cookery do !

We never know what's in us till we stand by ourselves" (George Meredith, ORF)

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

We are betrayed by what is false within

Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.

A dainty rogue in porcelain

Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to die for each other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment