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I Feel So Much The Continual Death Of Everything And Everybody, And Have So Learned To Reconcile Myself To It, That The Final And Official End Loses Most Of Its Impressiveness.

-George Santayana

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I Feel So Much

George Santayana

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I Feel So Much The Continual Death Of Everything And Everybody, And Have So Learned To Reconcile Myself To It, That The Final And Official End Loses Most Of Its Impressiveness.

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Perhaps The Universe Is Nothing But An Equilibrium Of Idiocies.

Intelligence Is Quickness In Seeing Things As They Are.

What Is More Important In Life Than Our Bodies Or In The World Than What We Look Like?

The Diseases Which Destroy A Man Are No Less Natural Than The Instincts Which Preserve Him.

Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

In Greece Wise Men Speak And Fools Decide.

The Fact Of Having Been Born Is A Bad Augury For Immortality.

I Have Imagination, And Nothing That Is Real Is Alien To Me.

Friendship Is Almost Always The Union Of A Part Of One Mind With The Part Of Another; People Are Friends In Spots.

Love Is A Brilliant Illustration Of A Principle Everywhere Discoverable: Namely, That Human Reason Lives By Turning The Friction Of Material Forces Into The Light Of Ideal Goods.

To Be Bewitched Is Not To Be Saved, Though All The Magicians And Aesthetes In The World Should Pronounce It To Be So.

Wealth, Religion, Military Victory Have More Rhetorical Than Efficacious Worth.

Sex Endows The Individual With A Dumb And Powerful Instinct, Which Carries His Body And Soul Continually Towards Another, Makes It One Of The Dearest Employments Of His Life To Select And Pursue A Companion, And Joins To Possession The Keenest Pleasure, To Rivalry The Fiercest Rage, And To Solicitude An Eternal Melancholy. What More Could Be Needed To Suffuse The World With The Deepest Meaning And Beauty?

A Man's Feet Should Be Planted In His Country, But His Eyes Should Survey The World.

A Soul Is But The Last Bubble Of A Long Fermentation In The World.

Plasticity Loves New Moulds Because It Can Fill Them, But For A Man Of Sluggish Mind And Bad Manners There Is Decidedly No Place Like Home.

The Brute Necessity Of Believing Something So Long As Life Lasts Does Not Justify Any Belief In Particular.

The Pint Would Call The Quart A Dualist, If You Tried To Pour The Quart Into Him.

Each Religion, By The Help Of More Or Less Myth, Which It Takes More Or Less Seriously, Proposes Some Method Of Fortifying The Human Soul And Enabling It To Make Its Peace With Its Destiny.

A Child Educated Only At School Is An Uneducated Child.

Lovely Promise And Quick Ruin Are Seen Nowhere Better Than In Gothic Architecture.

The Philosophy Of The Common Man Is An Old Wife That Gives Him No Pleasure, Yet He Cannot Live Without Her, And Resents Any Aspersions That Strangers May Cast On Her Character.

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

Periods Of Tranquillity Are Seldom Prolific Of Creative Achievement. Mankind Has To Be Stirred Up.

Religion Should Be Disentangled As Much As Possible From History And Authority And Metaphysics, And Made To Rest Honestly On One's Fine Feelings, On One's Indomitable Optimism And Trust In Life.

All Spiritual Interests Are Supported By Animal Life.

Historical Investigation Has For Its Aim To Fix The Order And Character Of Events Throughout Past Time And In All Places. The Task Is Frankly Superhuman.

The Aim Of Life Is Some Way Of Living, As Flexible And Gentle As Human Nature; So That Ambition May Stoop To Kindness, And Philosophy To Condor And Humor. Neither Prosperity Nor Empire Nor Heaven Can Be Worth Winning At The Price Of A Virulent Temper, Bloody Hands, An Anguished Spirit, And A Vain Hatred Of The Rest Of The World.

Spirit Itself Is Not Human; It May Spring Up In Any Life... It May Exist In All Animals, And Who Know In How Many Undreamt-of Beings, Or In The Midst Of What Worlds?

Art Is A Delayed Echo.

The Degree In Which A Poet's Imagination Dominates Reality Is, In The End, The Exact Measure Of His Importance And Dignity.

To Delight In War Is A Merit In The Soldier, A Dangerous Quality In The Captain, And A Positive Crime In The Statesman.

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

The Hunger For Facile Wisdom Is The Root Of All False Philosophy.

The Works Of Nature First Acquire A Meaning In The Commentaries They Provoke.

It Takes A Wonderful Brain And Exquisite Senses To Produce A Few Stupid Ideas.

A Great Man Need Not Be Virtuous, Nor His Opinions Right, But He Must Have A Firm Mind, A Distinctive Luminous Character.

Everything In Nature Is Lyrical In Its Ideal Essence, Tragic In Its Fate, And Comic In Its Existence.

One Real World Is Enough.

For Shakespeare, In The Matter Of Religion, The Choice Lay Between Christianity And Nothing. He Chose Nothing.

Science Is Nothing But Developed Perception, Interpreted Intent, Common Sense Rounded Out And Minutely Articulated.

The Highest Form Of Vanity Is Love Of Fame.

The Theater, For All Its Artifices, Depicts Life In A Sense More Truly Than History.

A Grateful Environment Is A Substitute For Happiness. It Can Quicken Us From Without As A Fixed Hope And Affection, Or As The Consciousness Of A Right Life, Can Quicken Us From Within.

In This World We Must Either Institute Conventional Forms Of Expression Or Else Pretend That We Have Nothing To Express; The Choice Lies Between A Mask And A Figleaf.

A Body Seriously Out Of Equilibrium, Either With Itself Or With Its Environment, Perishes Outright. Not So A Mind. Madness And Suffering Can Set Themselves No Limit.

Our Character ... Is An Omen Of Our Destiny, And The More Integrity We Have And Keep, The Simpler And Nobler That Destiny Is Likely To Be.

Our Knowledge Is A Torch Of Smoky Pine That Lights The Pathway But One Step Ahead Across A Void Of Mystery And Dread.

Nietzsche Was Personally More Philosophical Than His Philosophy. His Talk About Power, Harshness, And Superb Immorality Was The Hobby Of A Harmless Young Scholar And Constitutional Invalid.

To Be Interested In The Changing Seasons Is A Happier State Of Mind Than To Be Hopelessly In Love With Spring.

Those Who Speak Most Of Progress Measure It By Quantity And Not By Quality.

Beauty Is Objectified Pleasure.

The Aim Of Education Is The Condition Of Suspended Judgment On Everything.

Nothing Can Be Meaner Than The Anxiety To Live On, To Live On Anyhow And In Any Shape.

The Whole Machinery Of Our Intelligence, Our General Ideas And Laws, Fixed And External Objects, Principles, Persons, And Gods, Are So Many Symbolic, Algebraic Expressions. They Stand For Experience; Experience Which We Are Incapable Of Retaining And Surveying In Its Multitudinous Immediacy. We Should Flounder Hopelessly, Like The Animals, Did We Not Keep Ourselves Afloat And Direct Our Course By These Intellectual Devices. Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Fact.

The Profoundest Affinities Are Those Most Readily Felt.

I Leave You But The Sound Of Many A Word In Mocking Echoes Haply Overheard, I Sang To Heaven. My Exile Made Me Free, From World To World, From All Worlds Carried Me.

Man Has An Inexhuastible Faculty For Lying, Especially To Himself.

Miracles Are Propitious Accidents, The Natural Causes Of Which Are Too Complicated To Be Readily Understood.

Before He Sets Out, The Traveler Must Possess Fixed Interests And Facilities To Be Served By Travel.

History Is Always Written Wrong, And So Always Needs To Be Rewritten.

Writing History

Eloquence Is A Republican Art, As Conversation Is An Aristocratic One.

Man's Most Serious Activity Is Play.

People Never Believe In Volcanoes Until The Lava Actually Overtakes Them.

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

Chaos Is A Name For Any Order That Produces Confusion In Our Minds.

It Is Right To Prefer Our Own Country To All Others, Because We Are Children And Citizens Before We Can Be Travellers Or Philosophers.

My Soul Hates The Fool Whose Only Passion Is To Live By Rule.

Man Is Not Made To Understand Life, But To Live It.

The Habit Of Looking For Beauty In Everything Makes Us Notice The Shortcomings Of Things, Our Sense, Hungry For Complete Satisfaction, Misses The Perfection It Demands.

Religion In Its Humility Restores Man To His Only Dignity, The Courage To Live By Grace.

The Bible Is A Wonderful Source Of Inspiration For Those Who Don't Understand It.

Mortality Has Its Compensations; One Is That All Evils Are Transitory, Another That Better Times May Come.

Man Alone Knows That He Must Die; But That Very Knowledge Raises Him, In A Sense, Above Mortality, By Making Him A Sharer In The Vision Of Eternal Truth. He Becomes The Spectator Of His Own Tragedy; He Sympathizes So Much With The Fury Of The Storm That He Has No Ears Left For The Shipwrecked Sailor, Though The Sailor Were His Own Soul. The Truth Is Cruel, But It Can Be Loved, And It Makes Free Those Who Have Loved It.

Thought Is Essentially Practical In The Sense That But For Thought No Motion Would Be An Action, No Change A Progress.

Men Have Feverishly Conceived A Heaven Only To Find It Insipid, And A Hell To Find It Ridiculous.

There Is No Greater Stupidity Or Meanness Than To Take Uniformity For An Ideal, As If It Were Not A Benefit And A Joy To A Man, Being What He Is, To Know That Many Are, Have Been, And Will Be Better Than He.

To Reform Means To Shatter One Form And To Create Another; But The Two Sides Of This Act Are Not Always Equally Intended Nor Equally Successful.

The Difficult Is That Which Can Be Done Immediately; The Impossible That Which Takes A Little Longer.

Nothing Is Inherently And Invincibly Young Except Spirit. And Spirit Can Enter A Human Being Perhaps Better In The Quiet Of Old Age And Dwell There More Undisturbed Than In The Turmoil Of Adventure.

If You Prefer Illusions To Realities, It Is Only Because All Decent Realities Have Eluded You And Left You In The Lurch; Or Else Your Contempt For The World Is Mere Hypocrisy And Funk.

Old Age Is As Forgetful As Youth, And More Incorrigible; It Displays The Same Inattentiveness To Conditions; Its Memory Becomes Self-repeating And Degenerates Into An Instinctive Reaction, Like A Bird's Chirp.

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

Skepticism Is The Chastity Of The Intellect, And It Is Shameful To Surrender It Too Soon Or To The First Comer.

Many Possessions, If They Do Not Make A Man Better, Are At Least Expected To Make His Children Happier; And This Pathetic Hope Is Behind Many Exertions.

The Tendency To Gather And To Breed Philosophers In Universities Does Not Belong To Ages Of Free And Humane Reflection: It Is Scholastic And Proper To The Middle Ages And To Germany.

The Word Experience Is Like A Shrapnel Shell, And Bursts Into A Thousand Meanings.

Oxford, The Paradise Of Dead Philosophies.

With You A Part Of Me Hath Passed Away; For In The Peopled Forest Of My Mind A Tree Made Leafless By This Wintry Wind Shall Never Don Again Its Green Array. Chapel And Fireside, Country Road And Bay, Have Something Of Their Friendliness Resigned; Another, If I Would, I Could Not Find, And I Am Grown Much Older In A Day. But Yet I Treasure In My Memory Your Gift Of Charity, And Young Hearts Ease, And The Dear Honour Of Your Amity; For These Once Mine, My Life Is Rich With These. And I Scarce Know Which Part May Greater Be,-- What I Keep Of You, Or You Rob From Me.

Emotion Is Primarily About Nothing And Much Of It Remains About Nothing To The End.

The Constant Demands Of The Heart And The Belly Can Allow Man Only An Incidental Indulgence In The Pleasures Of The Eye And The Understanding.

There Is No Tyranny So Hateful As A Vulgar And Anonymous Tyranny. It Is All-permeating, All-thwarting; It Blasts Every Budding Novelty And Sprig Of Genius With Its Omnipresent And Fierce Stupidity. Such A Headless People Has The Mind Of A Worm And The Claws Of A Dragon.

If Artists And Poets Are Unhappy, It Is After All Because Happiness Does Not Interest Them.

Beauty As We Feel It Is Something Indescribable; What It Is Or What It Means Can Never Be Said.

The World Is So Ordered That We Must, In A Material Sense, Lose Everything We Have And Love, One Thing After Another, Until We Ourselves Close Our Eyes.

Skepticism, Like Chastity, Should Not Be Relinquished Too Readily.

Trust The Man Who Hesitates In His Speech And Is Quick And Steady In Action, But Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

An Operation That Eventually Kills May Be Technically Successful, And The Man May Die Cured; And So A Description Of Religion Thatshowed It To Be Madness Might First Show How Real And Warm It Was, So That If It Perished, At Least It Would Perish Understood.

To Be Brief Is Almost A Condition Of Being Inspired.

It Is Veneer, Rouge, Aestheticism, Art Museums, New Theaters, Etc. That Make America Impotent. The Good Things Are Football, Kindness, And Jazz Bands.

There Is No Cure For Birth And Death Save To Enjoy The Interval.

There Are Books In Which The Footnotes, Or The Comments Scrawled By Some Reader's Hand In The Margin, Are More Interesting Than The Text. The World Is One Of Those Books.

Sanctity And Genius Are As Rebellious As Vice.

The Mind Of The Renaissance Was Not A Pilgrim Mind, But A Sedentary City Mind, Like That Of The Ancients.

A Friend's Only Gift Is Himself.

It Is Characteristic Of Spontaneous Friendship To Take On First, Without Enquiry And Almost At First Sight, The Unseen Doings And Unspoken Sentiments Of Our Friends; The Parts Known Give Us Evidence Enough That The Unknown Parts Cannot Be Much Amiss.

Intolerance Is A Form Of Egotism, And To Condemn Egotism Intolerantly Is To Share It.

An Artist Is A Dreamer Consenting To Dream Of The Actual World.

The Line Between What Is Known Scientifically And What Has To Be Assumed In Order To Support Knowledge Is Impossible To Draw. Memory Itself Is An Internal Rumour.

Reason In My Philosophy Is Only A Harmony Among Irrational Impulses.

Progress, Far From Consisting In Change, Depends On Retentiveness. When Change Is Absolute There Remains No Being To Improve And No Direction Is Set For Possible Improvement: And When Experience Is Not Retained, As Among Savages, Infancy Is Perpetual. Those Who Cannot Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It. In The First Stage Of Life The Mind Is Frivolous And Easily Distracted; It Misses Progress By Failing In Consecutiveness And Persistence. This Is The Condition Of Children And Barbarians, In Which Instinct Has Learned Nothing From Experience.

What Religion A Man Shall Have Is A Historical Accident, Quite As Much As What Language He Shall Speak.

Graphic Design Is The Paradise Of Individuality, Eccentricity, Heresy, Abnormality, Hobbies And Humors.

Prayer Is Not A Substitute For Work; It Is An Effort To Work Further And Be Efficient Beyond The Range Of One's Powers.

Do Not Have Evil-doers For Friends, Do Not Have Low People For Friends: Have Virtuous People For Friends, Have For Friends The Best Of Men.

Skepticism Is The Chastity Of The Intellect, And It Is Shameful To Surrender It Too Soon Or To The First Comer; There Is Nobility In Preserving It Coolly And Proudly Through Long Youth, Until At Last, In The Ripeness Of Instinct And Discretion, It Can Be Safely Exchanged For Fidelity And Happiness.

Philosophy May Describe Unreasoning, As It May Describe Force; It Cannot Hope To Refute Them.

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

Only The Dead Have Seen The End Of The War.

The Muffled Syllables That Nature Speaks Fill Us With Deeper Longing For Her Word; She Hides A Meaning That The Spirit Seeks, She Makes A Sweeter Music Than Is Heard.

Wisdom Lies In Taking Everything With Good Humor And A Grain Of Salt.

Civilization Is Perhaps Approaching One Of Those Long Winters That Overtake It From Time To Time. Romantic Christendom - Picturesque, Passionate, Unhappy Episode - May Be Coming To An End. Such A Catastrophe Would Be No Reason For Despair.

Incapacity To Appreciate Certain Types Of Beauty May Be The Condition Sine Qua Non For The Appreciation Of Another Kind; The Greatest Capacity Both For Enjoyment And Creation Is Highly Specialized And Exclusive, And Hence The Greatest Ages Of Art Have Often Been Strangely Intolerant. The Invectives Of One School Against Another, Perverse As They Are Philosophically, Are Artistically Often Signs Of Health, Because They Indicate A Vital Appreciation Of Certain Kinds Of Beauty, A Love Of Them That Has Grown Into A Jealous Passion.

Nonsense Is So Good Only Because Common Sense Is So Limited.

The Truth Properly Means The Sum Of All True Propositions, What Omniscience Would Assert, The Whole Ideal System Of Qualities Andrelations Which The World Has Exemplified Or Will Exemplify. The Truth Is All Things Seen Under The Form Of Eternity.

The Combative Instinct Is A Savage Prompting By Which One Man's Good Is Found In Another's Evil.

I Like To Walk About Amidst The Beautiful Things That Adorn The World.

Even Under The Most Favorable Circumstances No Mortal Can Be Asked To Seize The Truth In Its Wholeness Or At Its Center.

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

Words Of Wisdom

Disillusionment

An Ideal Cannot Wait For Its Realization To Prove Its Validity.

A Dream Is Always Simmering Below The Conventional Surface Of Speech And Reflection.

The Arts Must Study Their Occasions; They Must Stand Modestly Aside Until They Can Slip In Fitly Into The Interstices Of Life.

Spirituality Lies In Regarding Existence Merely As A Vehicle For Contemplation, And Contemplation Merely A Vehicle For Joy.

Perhaps The Only True Dignity Of Man Is His Capacity To Despise Himself.

Nothing Can Be Meaner Than The Anxiety To Live On, To Live On Anyhow And In Any Shape; A Spirit With Any Honor Is Not Willing To Live Except In Its Own Way, And A Spirit With Any Wisdom Is Not Over-eager To Live At All.

Fanaticism Consists Of Redoubling Your Effort When You Have Forgotten Your Aim.

The Mass Of Mankind Is Divided Into Two Classes, The Sancho Panza's Who Have A Sense For Reality, But No Ideals, And The Don Quixote's With A Sense For Ideals, But Mad.

Never Have I Enjoyed Youth So Thoroughly As I Have In My Old Age. In Writing Dialogues In Limbo, The Last Puritan, And Now All These Descriptions Of The Friends Of My Youth And The Young Friends Of My Middle Age, I Have Drunk The Pleasure Of Life More Pure, More Joyful Than It Ever Was When Mingled With All The Hidden Anxieties And Little Annoyances Of Actual Living. Nothing Is Inherently And Invincibly Young Except Spirit. And Spirit Can Enter A Human Being Perhaps Better In The Quiet Of Old Age And Dwell There More Undisturbed Than In The Turmoil Of Adventure.

Never Have I Enjoyed Youth So Thoroughly As I Have In My Old Age

When All Beliefs Are Challenged Together, The Just And Necessary Ones Have A Chance To Step Forward And Re-establish Themselves Alone.

Does The Thoughtful Man Suppose That...the Present Experiment In Civilization Is The Last World We Will See?

Catastrophes Come When Some Dominant Institution, Swollen Like A Soap-bubble And Still Standing Without Foundations, Suddenly Crumbles At The Touch Of What May Seem A Word Or Idea, But Is Really Some Stronger Material Source.

Religion Is Indeed A Convention Which A Man Must Be Bred In To Endure With Any Patience; And Yet Religion, For All Its Poetic Motley, Comes Closer Than Work-a-day Opinion To The Heart Of Things.

That Fear First Created The Gods Is Perhaps As True As Anything So Brief Could Be On So Great A Subject.

Almost Every Wise Saying Has An Opposite One, No Less Wise, To Balance It.

Half Our Standards Come From Our First Masters, And The Other Half From Our First Loves.

It Is True That I Am Carrying Out Various Methods Of Treatment Recommended By Doctors And Dentists In The Hope Of Dying In The Remote Future In Perfect Health.

The Superiority Of The Distant Over The Present Is Only Due To The Mass And Variety Of The Pleasures That Can Be Suggested, Compared With The Poverty Of Those That Can At Any Time Be Felt.

The Great Difficulty In Education Is To Get Experience Out Of Ideas.

The Fly That Prefers Sweetness To A Long Life May Drown In Honey.

Those Who Cannot Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It.

Music Contains A Whole Gamut Of Experience, From Sensuous Elements To Ultimate Intellectual Harmonies.

It Is Pathetic To Observe How Lowly The Motives Are That Religion, Even The Highest, Attributes To The Deity... To Be Given The Best Morsel, To Be Remembered, To Be Praised, To Be Obeyed Blindly And Punctiliously - These Have Been Thought Points Of Honor With The Gods.

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

We Do Right Enough Darling, If We Go Wrong Together.

It Is One Thing To Lack A Heart And Another To Possess Eyes And A Just Imagination.

Memory... Is An Internal Rumor.

A Conception Not Reducible To The Small Change Of Daily Experience Is Like A Currency Not Exchangeable For Articles Of Consumption; It Is Not A Symbol, But A Fraud.

The Young Man Who Has Not Wept Is A Savage, And The Older Man Who Will Not Laugh Is A Fool.

Those Who Cannot Remember The Pastare Condemned To Repeat It. Or: Those Who Have Never Heard Of Good System Development Practice Are Condemned To Reinvent It.

I Like To Walk About Among The Beautiful Things That Adorn The World; But Private Wealth I Should Decline, Or Any Sort Of Personal Possessions, Because They Would Take Away My Liberty.

It Is In Rare And Scattered Instants That Beauty Smiles Even On Her Adorers, Who Are Reduced For Habitual Comfort To Remembering Her Past Favours.

It Is Rash To Intrude Upon The Piety Of Others: Both The Depth And The Grace Of It Elude The Stranger.

Profound Skepticism Is Favorable To Conventions, Because It Doubts That The Criticism Of Conventions Is Any Truer Than They Are.

The Irrational In The Human Has Something About It Altogether Repulsive And Terrible, As We See In The Maniac, The Miser, The Drunkard Or The Ape.

To Feel Beauty Is A Better Thing Than To Understand How We Come To Feel It. To Have Imagination And Taste, To Love The Best, To Be Carried By The Contemplation Of Nature To A Vivid Faith In The Ideal, All This Is More, A Great Deal More, Than Any Science Can Hope To Be.

Progress, Far From Consisting In Change, Depends On Retentiveness. Those Who Cannot Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It.

To Be Boosted By An Illusion Is Not To Live Better Than To Live In Harmony With The Truth ... These Refusals To Part With A Decayed Illusion Are Really An Infection To The Mind.

My Atheism, Like That Of Spinoza, Is True Piety Towards The Universe And Denies Only Gods Fashioned By Men In Their Own Image, To Be Servants Of Their Human Interests.

The Existence Of Any Evil Anywhere At Any Time Absolutely Ruins A Total Optimism.

Memory Itself Is An Internal Rumour; And When To This Hearsay Within The Mind We Add The Falsified Echoes That Reach Us From Others, We Have But A Shifting And Unseizable Basis To Build Upon. The Picture We Frame Of The Past Changes Continually And Grows Every Day Less Similar To The Original Experience Which It Purports To Describe.

Experience Is A Mere Whiff Or Rumble, Produced By Enormously Complex And Ill-deciphered Causes Of Experience; And In The Other Direction, Experience Is A Mere Peephole Through Which Glimpses Come Down To Us Of Eternal Things.

Nature Is Like A Beautiful Woman That May Be As Delightfully And As Truly Known At A Certain Distance As Upon A Closer View; As To Knowing Her Through And Through; That Is Nonsense In Both Cases, And Might Not Reward Our Pains.

History Is A Pack Of Lies About Events That Never Happened Told By People Who Weren't There.

All Language Is Rhetorical, And Even The Senses Are Poets.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

To Attempt To Be Religious Without Practicing A Specific Religion Is As Possible As Attempting To Speak Without A Specific Language.

The Best Men In All Ages Keep Classic Traditions Alive

The Little Word Is Has Its Tragedies: It Marries And Identifies Different Things With The Greatest Innocence; And Yet No Two Are Ever Identical, And If Therein Lies The Charm Of Wedding Them And Calling Them One, Therein Too Lies The Danger.

What Renders Man An Imaginative And Moral Being Is That In Society He Gives New Aims To His Life Which Could Not Have Existed In Solitude : The Aims Of Friendship , Religion , Science , And Art .

It Is The Acme Of Life To Understand Life.

It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart.

In The Gospels, For Instance, We Sometimes Find The Kingdom Of Heaven Illustrated By Principles Drawn From Observation Of This World Rather Than From An Ideal Conception Of Justice; ... They Remind Us That The God We Are Seeking Is Present And Active, That He Is The Living God; They Are Doubtless Necessary If We Are To Keep Religion From Passing Into A Mere Idealism And God Into The Vanishing Point Of Our Thought And Endeavour.

Whoever It Was Who Searched The Heavens With A Telescope And Found No God Would Not Have Found The Human Mind If He Had Searched The Brain With A Microscope.

Wisdom Comes From Disillusionment.

Disillusionment

Nothing Is Really So Poor And Melancholy As Art That Is Interested In Itself And Not In Its Subject.

The Traveller Must Be Somebody And Come From Somewhere, So That His Definite Character And Moral Traditions May Supply An Organ And A Point Of Comparison For His Observations.

Work And Love These Are The Basics; Waking Life Is A Dream Controlled.

Truth Is A Jewel Which Should Not Be Painted Over; But It May Be Set To Advantage And Shown In A Good Light.

The Family Is An Early Expedient And In Many Ways Irrational. If The Race Had Developed A Special Sexless Class To Be Nurses, Pedagogues, And Slaves, Like The Workers Among Ants And Bees, Then The Family Would Have Been Unnecessary. Such A Division Of Labor Would Doubtless Have Involved Evils Of Its Own, But It Would Have Obviated Some Drags And Vexations Proper To The Family.

Nothing Can So Pierce The Soul As The Uttermost Sigh Of The Body.

An Artist May Visit A Museum But Only A Pedant Can Live There.

The Passions Grafted On Wounded Pride Are The Most Inveterate; They Are Green And Vigorous In Old Age.

Religion Is The Love Of Life In The Consciousness Of Impotence.

It Takes Patience To Appreciate Domestic Bliss; Volatile Spirits Prefer Unhappiness.

A Man's Memory May Almost Become The Art Of Continually Varying And Misrepresenting His Past, According To His Interest In The Present.

To Condemn Spontaneous And Delightful Occupations Because They Are Useless For Self-preservation Shows An Uncritical Prizing Of Life Irrespective Of Its Content.

It Is Always Pleasant To Be Urged To Do Something On The Ground That One Can Do It Well.

To Turn Events Into Ideas Is The Function Of Literature.

Eternal Vigilance Is The Price Of Knowledge.

Eternal Vigilance

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