Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Geraldine Jewsbury

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English novelist Geraldine Jewsbury.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Geraldine Jewsbury

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury was an English novelist, book reviewer and literary figure in London, best known for popular novels such as Zoe: the History of Two Lives and reviews for the literary periodical the Athenaeum. Jewsbury never married, but enjoyed intimate friendships, notably with Jane Carlyle, wife of the essayist Thomas Carlyle. Jewsbury's romantic feelings for her and the complexity of their relations appear in Jewsbury's writings. She tried unsuccessfully to encourage her close friend Walter Mantell to start a new life as an author after his disagreement with the New Zealand government over Maori land rights.

What would become of the world without the Devil? Under all the different systems of religion that have guided or misguided the world for the last six thousand years, the Devil has been the grand scapegoat. He has had to bear the blame of every thing that has gone wrong. All the evil that gets committed is laid to his door, and he has, besides, the credit of hindering all the good that has never got done at all. If mankind were not thus one and all victims to the Devil, what an irredeemable set of scoundrels they would be obliged to confess themselves!
I wish there were some photographic process by which one's mind could be struck off and transferred to that of the friend we wish to know it, without the medium of this confounded letter-writing!
men change less than is imagined; their after life is only a kaleidescope combination of the elements of their character at the period of adolescence. — © Geraldine Jewsbury
men change less than is imagined; their after life is only a kaleidescope combination of the elements of their character at the period of adolescence.
society ... is tolerant of crimes, and long suffering with dullness, but it shows no mercy to those who are different from other people.
One's conscience reproaches one much more stingingly for one's follies than one's crimes.
Love ... is a sacred fire that must not be burnt to idols.
Whilst you live a very little religion seems enough; but believe me, it requires a great deal when you come to die.
Did you ever see a giraffe? It is like something from between the regions of truth and fiction.
There is no wisdom equal to that which comes after the event.
Death is the last fact of which we can be certain.
But have you never noticed that when one has been trying to do something really good one is much nearer committing some special sin than when one keeps on in the selfish, matter-of-fact prudence of minding one's own business, and that alone?
Our wishes never seem so little desirable as when on the verge of accomplishment; we draw back instinctively, they look so different from what we expected.
People always make mistakes when they fancy themselves exceptions.
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