Leslie Stephen Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Leslie Stephen's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author Leslie Stephen's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 20 quotes on this page collected since November 28, 1832! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
All quotes by Leslie Stephen: more...
  • If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.

    Profound   Wish   Study  
  • The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood.

    Sir Leslie Stephen (1873). “Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking”, p.361
  • When I ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of discovering that I had never really believed.

    Frederic William Maitland, Leslie Stephen (2012). “The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen”, p.133, Cambridge University Press
  • The English literary movement at the end of the 18th century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking.

    Leslie Stephen (2012). “Studies of a Biographer”, p.265, Cambridge University Press
  • The poet should touch our heart by showing his own

    Heart   Poet   Should  
    Sir Leslie Stephen (1919). “Hours in a Library: Charlotte Brontë. Charles Kingsley. Godwin and Shelley. Gray and his school. Sterne. Country books. George Eliot. Autobiography. Carlyle's ethics. The State trials. Coleridge”
  • He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

    Eye   Views   His Eyes  
    Leslie Stephen (1871). “The Playground of Europe”, p.130
  • Chance is a name for our ignorance.

  • I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.

    Leslie Stephen (2013). “The Playground of Europe”, p.220, Cambridge University Press
  • The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

  • A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.

    Leslie Stephen (2011). “Samuel Johnson”, p.60, Cambridge University Press
  • Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

    Sir Leslie Stephen (1875). “Hours in a Library”, p.227
  • Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is doing a public service.

    Honesty   Men   Thinking  
    Leslie Stephen (1893). “An Agnostic's Apology”
  • Genius is a capacity for taking trouble.

  • God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation.

    Believe   Men   People  
    Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”
  • The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

    Leslie Stephen (1873). “Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking”, p.52
  • Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?

    Angel   Men   Laughing  
    Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”
  • Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season.

    Sir Leslie Stephen (2016). “Studies of a Biographer”, p.462, Library of Alexandria
  • Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species.

    Leslie Stephen (1928). “Sir Thomas Browne. Jonathan Edwards. Horace Walpole. Dr. Johnson's writings. Crabbe. William Hazlitt. Disraeli's novels. Massinger”
  • The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head.

    Thinking   Way   Opinion  
  • If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt.

    Thinking   People   Doubt  
    The Fortnightly Review, vol. 34, p. 177, 1880.
Page 1 of 1
We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 20 quotes from the Author Leslie Stephen, starting from November 28, 1832! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
Leslie Stephen quotes about: