Top 25 Quotes by George Steiner

About George Steiner

These are some quotes by American author George Steiner Critic, who was born on April 23, 1929.

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

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

George Steiner

Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The notion that it is the occasion for our cleverness fills me with baffled bitterness and anger.

Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The notion that it is the occasion for our cleverness fills me with baffled bitterness and anger.

George Steiner

My writing of fiction comes under a very general heading of those teachers, critics, scholars who like to try their own hand once or twice in their lives.

My writing of fiction comes under a very general heading of those teachers, critics, scholars who like to try their own hand once or twice in their lives.

George Steiner

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.

George Steiner

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.

George Steiner

I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.

I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.

George Steiner

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

George Steiner

Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.

Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.

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.

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.

George Steiner

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

George Steiner

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