--- title: "George Meredith Quotes | QuotesBy.net" description: "George Meredith presents poetic, thoughtful musings on nature, society and truth that linger in the mind. Read all 65 quotes by George Meredith on QuotesBy.net." image: "https://quotesby.net/wp-content/themes/quotesby-editorial/assets/og-default.png" --- ## George Meredith quotes 1. > First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill. [Permalink to quote \#1](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/1/ "Permalink to quote 1") 2. > See ye not, Courtesy Is the true Alchemy, Turning to gold all it touches and tries? [Permalink to quote \#2](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/2/ "Permalink to quote 2") 3. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#3](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/3/ "Permalink to quote 3") 4. > 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! [Permalink to quote \#4](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/4/ "Permalink to quote 4") 5. > Into the breast that gives the rose, Shall I with shuddering fall? [Permalink to quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") 6. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#6](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/6/ "Permalink to quote 6") 7. > For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes. [Permalink to quote \#7](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/7/ "Permalink to quote 7") 8. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#8](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/8/ "Permalink to quote 8") 9. > But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes That look on it! the diverse things they see! [Permalink to quote \#9](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/9/ "Permalink to quote 9") 10. > On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend. [Permalink to quote \#10](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/10/ "Permalink to quote 10") 11. > Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. [Permalink to quote \#11](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/11/ "Permalink to quote 11") 12. > Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. [Permalink to quote \#12](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/12/ "Permalink to quote 12") 13. > She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! [Permalink to quote \#13](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/13/ "Permalink to quote 13") 14. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#14](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/14/ "Permalink to quote 14") 15. > Civil limitation daunts His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he. [Permalink to quote \#15](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/15/ "Permalink to quote 15") 16. > With patient inattention hear him prate. [Permalink to quote \#16](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/16/ "Permalink to quote 16") 17. > Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes. [Permalink to quote \#17](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/17/ "Permalink to quote 17") 18. > Behold the life at ease; it drifts, The sharpened life commands its course. [Permalink to quote \#18](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/18/ "Permalink to quote 18") 19. > All wisdom's armoury this man could wield [Permalink to quote \#19](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/19/ "Permalink to quote 19") 20. > Cannon his name, Cannon his voice, he came. [Permalink to quote \#20](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/20/ "Permalink to quote 20") 21. > I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man. [Permalink to quote \#21](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/21/ "Permalink to quote 21") 22. > Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered. [Permalink to quote \#22](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/22/ "Permalink to quote 22") 23. > Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious. [Permalink to quote \#23](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/23/ "Permalink to quote 23") 24. > The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts. [Permalink to quote \#24](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/24/ "Permalink to quote 24") 25. > Kissing don't last; cookery do! [Permalink to quote \#25](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/25/ "Permalink to quote 25") 26. > God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! [Permalink to quote \#26](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/26/ "Permalink to quote 26") 27. > Speech is the small change of Silence. [Permalink to quote \#27](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/27/ "Permalink to quote 27") 28. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#28](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/28/ "Permalink to quote 28") 29. > And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of my soul. [Permalink to quote \#29](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/29/ "Permalink to quote 29") 30. > The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband and wife and lover. [Permalink to quote \#30](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/30/ "Permalink to quote 30") 31. > What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is warm. Intelligence and instinct now are one. But nature says: 'My children most they seem When they least know me: therefore I decree That they shall suffer.' Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. Then if we study Nature we are wise. [Permalink to quote \#31](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/31/ "Permalink to quote 31") 32. > How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up, becomes a gem! [Permalink to quote \#32](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/32/ "Permalink to quote 32") 33. > In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within. [Permalink to quote \#33](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/33/ "Permalink to quote 33") 34. > More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar Utterly this fair garden we might win. [Permalink to quote \#34](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/34/ "Permalink to quote 34") 35. > 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! [Permalink to quote \#35](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/35/ "Permalink to quote 35") 36. > Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. [Permalink to quote \#36](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/36/ "Permalink to quote 36") 37. > She \[Comedy\] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. [Permalink to quote \#37](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/37/ "Permalink to quote 37") 38. > Cynicism is intellectual dandyism. [Permalink to quote \#38](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/38/ "Permalink to quote 38") 39. > In...the book of Egoism, it is written, possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity. [Permalink to quote \#39](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/39/ "Permalink to quote 39") 40. > A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power. [Permalink to quote \#40](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/40/ "Permalink to quote 40") 41. > What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature. [Permalink to quote \#41](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/41/ "Permalink to quote 41") 42. > The well of true wit is truth itself. [Permalink to quote \#42](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/42/ "Permalink to quote 42") 43. > Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too. [Permalink to quote \#43](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/43/ "Permalink to quote 43") 44. > 'How divine is utterance!' she said. 'As we to the brutes, poets are to us.' [Permalink to quote \#44](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/44/ "Permalink to quote 44") 45. > There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by. [Permalink to quote \#45](https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith/45/ "Permalink to quote 45") ## Also attributed 1. > Caricature is rough truth. 2. > O have a care of natures that are mute! 3. > Lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire. 4. > I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man. 5. > Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks. 6. > Poetry is talking on tiptoe. 7. > Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life! 8. > Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose. 9. > We never know what's in us till we stand by ourselves. 10. > I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. 11. > George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality. 12. > She poured a little social sewage into his ears. 13. > The debts we owe ourselves are the hardest to pay. 14. > A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are. 15. > Observation is the most enduring of the pleasures of life. 16. > A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly, and eat our pot of honey on the grave. 17. > Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of laws. 18. > There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by. 19. > Always imitate the behaviour of the winners when you lose. 20. > Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "CollectionPage", "name": "George Meredith Quotes", "url": "https://quotesby.net/George-Meredith", "about": { "@type": "Person", "name": "George Meredith" }, "hasPart": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "George Meredith" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "See ye not, Courtesy Is the true Alchemy, Turning to gold all it touches and tries?", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "George Meredith" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and I reckon, rather true. 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