George Steiner Quotes

George Steiner — American Critic born on April 23, 1929,

Francis George Steiner,FBA is a French-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust. An article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath", saying that he is either "often credited with recasting the role of the critic", or a "pretentious namedropper" whose "range comes at the price of inaccuracy" and "complacency"... (wikipedia)

It took 10 months for me to learn to tie a lace; I must have howled with rage and frustration. But one day I could tie my laces. That no one can take from you. I profoundly distrust the pedagogy of ease.

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

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

To many men... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war.

There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.