Home / Authors / George Steiner

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.

Filter quotes by topic

All Men Humans Language World Art Book Literature Human Beings Culture Hands Ifs Poetry Written Age Believe Cities Criticism Critics Genius May

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?

“I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs.”

Humans Moments Sorry Affair Convinced Realistic I'm Sorry

Author:George Steiner

“Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.”

People Believe Humans Use Seems Hate Written Speech Forgiving Torture Bless Naive Astonishment

Author:George Steiner

“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 immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.”

Humans Majority Gray Immense Biographies Oblivion

Book:In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture

Source: In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture

“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

“To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.”

Men Humans Ideas Affair Interpretation Disagree Nevertheless Dissent Tribute Supremacy Sinister Hegel

Book:George Steiner: A Reader

Source: George Steiner: A Reader

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

Similar Authors

Ezra PoundBrowse related quotes
Anthony TrollopeBrowse related quotes
Jorge Luis BorgesBrowse related quotes
Northrop FryeBrowse related quotes
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelBrowse related quotes
Gilbert K. ChestertonBrowse related quotes
Jonathan SwiftBrowse related quotes
H. G. WellsBrowse related quotes
Irwin ShawBrowse related quotes
John RuskinBrowse related quotes