Quotes by : George Steiner

Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go....

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

Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The....

We speak in (rich) monotones. Our poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Orpheus shrinks....

Given my age, I am pretty near the end, probably, of my career as a writer, a scholar, a teacher. And....

The fantastically wasteful prodigality of human tongues, the Babel enigman, points to a vital multiplication....

No phonetic sign, except at a rudimentary, strictly speaking pre-linguistic level of vocal imitation,....

There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them,....

My father loved poetry and music. But deep in himself he thought teaching the finest thing a person could....