But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy. George Saintsbury More Quotes by George Saintsbury More Quotes From George Saintsbury The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth. George Saintsbury atmosphere italian exercise The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority. George Saintsbury hardest differences appreciation When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written. George Saintsbury literature writing people I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast. George Saintsbury cooking food thinking When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book) George Saintsbury wine book people But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat - it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older - as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast. George Saintsbury flirting meals thinking Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare. George Saintsbury rejoice thank-god facts The Book of History is the Bible of Irony. George Saintsbury irony book We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire. George Saintsbury writing men thinking Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage. George Saintsbury oratory savages literature Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world. George Saintsbury endeavour criticism world So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge. George Saintsbury three Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right. George Saintsbury majority ifs reason The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story. George Saintsbury romance west stories Alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy. George Saintsbury alcohol body soul It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times. George Saintsbury race drinking beauty One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. George Saintsbury lateness names two But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do. George Saintsbury style gold giving Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist. George Saintsbury novelists missing ordinary To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much. George Saintsbury division romance mind
