Leslie Stephen Quotes (1832-1904)

“Is there not a teaching of nature very apt to suggest horror and despair rather than a complacent brooding over soothing thoughts?”

“The doctrine of toleration requires a positive as well as a negative statement. It is not only wrong to burn a man on account of his creed, but it is right to encourage the open avowal and defence of every opinion sincerely maintained. Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.”

“Lawyers are apt to speak as though the legislature were omnipotent, as they do not require to go beyond its decisions. It is, of course, omnipotent in the sense that it can make whatever laws it pleases, inasmuch as a law means any rule which has been made by the legislature. But from the scientific point of view, the power of the legislature is of course strictly limited. It is limited, so to speak, both from within and from without; from within, because the legislature is the product of a certain social condition, and determined by whatever determines the society; and from without, because the power of imposing laws is dependent upon the instinct of subordination, which is itself limited. If a legislature decided that all blue-eyed babies should be murdered, the preservation of blue-eyed babies would be illegal; but legislators must go mad before they could pass such a law, and subjects be idiotic before they could submit to it.”

“Young men, as a rule, like a leader who has some distinct aim, good or bad, and if Jowett were to be judged by that test one would say that no one of his time was less qualified to be a leader. To a distinct view of the importance of some solution he seems to have joined the profound conviction that no conceivable solution would hold water. "He stood," says one of his pupils, in a rather different sense, "at the parting of many ways," and he wrote, one must add, "No thoroughfare" upon them all.”

“The pathos of some minor poems is unsurpassable. Cowper is attractive whenever he shows his genuine self.”

“No poet has been more loved because none has expressed more forcibly and truly the deepest moral emotions.”

“He held a unique position in his time as one who was equally respected by his tory allies, by such orthodox whigs as Brougham and Sydney Smith, and by such radicals as Romilly and Bentham. His relations to his own family seem to have been perfect, and no one had warmer or more lasting friendships. Though some injudicious admirers tried to raise his merits by depreciating the claims of his allies and predecessors in the anti-slavery movement, it may safely be said that there are few heroes of philanthropy whose careers will better stand an impartial investigation.”

“Lytton is one of the authors upon whose merits the critics have never agreed with the public. He won immense popularity in the face of generally hostile criticism, and even his success failed to obtain a reversal of the judgment. Some of his qualities, however, are incontestable. No English author has displayed more industry, energy, versatility, or less disposition to lapse into slovenliness. His last works are among his best; and though he often tried the experiment of publishing anonymously (as in The Caxtons and The Coming Race), his success showed that his popularity did not depend upon his previous fame.”

“Defoe's writings are of the highest value as an historical indication of the state of the middle and lower classes of his time.”

“Maurice is equally opposed to the sacerdotalism which makes the essence of religion consist in a magical removal of penalties instead of a 'regeneration' of the nature. He takes what may be vaguely called the 'subjective' view of religion, and sympathises with Schleiermacher's statement that piety is 'neither a knowing nor a doing, but an inclination and determination of the feeling.'”

“Scott will be severely judged by critics who hold, with Carlyle, that an author should be a prophet. Scott was neither a Wordsworth nor a Goethe, but an ‘auld Wat’ come again, and forced by circumstances to substitute publishing for cattle-lifting. The sword was still intrinsically superior in his eyes to the pen. His strong commonsense and business training kept him from practical anachronisms, and gave that tinge of ‘worldliness’ to his character which Lockhart candidly admits, but his life was an embodiment of the genial and masculine virtues of the older type so fondly celebrated in his writings. A passionate patriotism in public and cordial loyalty to his friends mark his whole career. A chief (in one of his favourite quotations) should be ‘a hedge about his friends, a heckle to his foes.’ He was too magnanimous to have personal foes, and no petty jealousy entangled him in a literary squabble. His history is a long record of hearty friendships.”

“He called individuals the tissue of society and stated that they are only relatively independent of the social body. Morality is distorted by social pressure and does not consider, first of all, the interests of the individual. Stephen claimed that pleasure must be accounted for by the conditions which make acts pleasant in specific cases. Survival in the evolutionary process, Stephen wrote, is more ultimate than pleasure, though men do not consciously realize this fact.”

“As Leslie Stephen has demonstrated, to suppress one truth is to suppress all truth, for truth is a coherent whole.”

“Although Stephen was apt to be too apologetic for intruding his opinions upon readers who were anxious to hear them, it is proper that every man should apologise for writing about Shakespeare. ... But it would have been a great loss to all lovers of good literature if Stephen had not, at the close of his life, overcome his diffidence and given us his forty-four pages on 'Shakespeare as a Man.'”