George Saintsbury Quotes

United Kingdom, Writer
October 23, 1845 – January, 28, 1933.

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA , was an English writer, literary historian, scholar, critic and wine connoisseur. Born in Lottery Hall, Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford, where he achieved a first class BA degree in Classical Mods, , and a second class in literae humaniores

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
- World
- Criticism
- Written
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
- Facts
- Name
- Languages

The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

George Saintsbury
Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

George Saintsbury
- Humour
- Lack
- Hostility
But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

George Saintsbury
Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage.

George Saintsbury
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
- Write
- Rules
I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

George Saintsbury
- Serious
- Breakfast
- Dinner

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

George Saintsbury
- Right
- Wrong
- Reasons
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
- History
- Alcohol
- Races