Quotes from George Meredith

Days, when the ball of our vision Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun; When the grasp 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 then, they dwindle, they glimmer As lights over mounds of the dead. -Ode to Youth and Memory

Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

Why mayn't they do what men do?' the Hero cried impetuously. 'I hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It's that that makes the ruin and horrors I see. Why mayn't they do what men do? I like the women who are brave enough not to be hypocrites. By Heaven! if these women are bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show, and deceive you in the end.

They were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted. She listened gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where a voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an attentive listener.

A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel of the sex. She points to her husband like the sunflower; her love illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth; she drags the world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises; she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not on earth such beauty!

Llevaba seis meses a sus órdenes, haciendo vida propia de un animal, degradado ante sí mismo, amoscado por las risas ajenas, perdido, perseguido, sobrecogido y, por así decirlo, marcado o herrado, para luego dejar que el proceso se repitiera.

El modesto se embriaga mucho antes cuando prueba la vanidad.

To begin to think is the beginning of disgust of the world.

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.

She heard the snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer. She had to cease to pray.

Chance works for us when we are good captains.

We are betrayed by what is false within.

Speech is the small change of silence.

The well of true wit is truth itself.

Memoirs: the backstairs of history.

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

Heiresses are never jilted.

Published memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity, and that he acknowledges the end.

The man or country that fights priestcraft and priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere.

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

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

Kissing don't last: cookery do.

The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it.

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