Leslie Stephen Quotes

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.

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is doing a public service.

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.

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

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.

The poet should touch our heart by showing his own

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.

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.

The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood.

If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.

Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

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?

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.

Genius is a capacity for taking trouble.

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

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.

The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

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.

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.