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George Steiner Quotes

Literary critic

George Steiner is an esteemed literary critic, born on April 23, 1929. His work spans a wide range of literary fields, including novels, poetry, drama, and philosophy.

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Famous George Steiner Quotes

“Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.”

Humans May Littles Human Beings Genius Understood Labor Chess Enterprise Pastime

Author:George Steiner

“There are three intellectual pursuits, and, so far as I am aware, only three, in which human beings have performed major feats before the age of puberty. They are music, mathematics, and chess.”

Humans Age Three Human Beings Majors Intellectual Mathematics Chess Pursuit Feats Puberty

Book:George Steiner: A Reader

Source: George Steiner: A Reader

“For many human beings, religion has been the music which they believe in.”

Believe Humans Has Beens Human Beings

Book:Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?

Source: Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?

“the calling of the teacher. There is no craft more privileged. To awaken in another human being powers, dreams beyond one’s own; to induce in others a love for that which one loves; to make of one’s inward present their future; that is a threefold adventure like no other.”

Humans Dream Human Beings Teacher Adventure Calling Crafts Inward Privileged One Love Best Teacher

Author:George Steiner

“The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.”

Humans Heart Important Human Beings Love Is Pay Brain Pieces Expression Prose Tribute

Author:George Steiner

“The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity.”

Source: George Steiner: A Reader

“The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.”

Humans Book Hands Reading Human Beings Intellectual Pencils Intellectualism

Book:No Passion Spent

Source: No Passion Spent

About the Author

Born: April 23, 1929
Known for: Literary critic
Quotes: 103

Books & Sources

George Steiner: A ReaderRelated source material

Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?Related source material

In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of CultureRelated source material

Language and SilenceRelated source material

Real PresencesRelated source material

After Babel: Aspects of Language and TranslationRelated source material

No Passion SpentRelated source material

The death of tragedyRelated source material

Language and silence: essays on language, literature, and the inhumanRelated source material

A Long Saturday: ConversationsRelated source material

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