George Meredith Quotes

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy;
Most, a dash between the two.

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

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

"How divine is utterance!" she said. "As we to the brutes, poets are to us."

Cannon his name,
Cannon his voice, he came.

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.

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

See ye not, Courtesy
Is the true Alchemy,
Turning to gold all it touches and tries?

Earth, the mother of all,
Moves on her stedfast way,
Gathering, flinging, sowing.
Mortals, we live in her day,
She in her children is growing.

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend.

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

It's past parsons to console us:
No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
I can die without my bolus;
Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely
Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
Then see how the rascal yields!

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! -
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!

Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.