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Men Have Always Been The Victims Of Trifles, But When They Were Uncomfortable And Passionate, And In Constant Danger, They Hardly Had Time To Notice What The Daily Texture Of Their Thoughts Was In Their Calm Intervals, Whereas With Us The Intervals Are All.

-George Santayana

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Men Have Always Been

George Santayana

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Men Have Always Been The Victims Of Trifles, But When They Were Uncomfortable And Passionate, And In Constant Danger, They Hardly Had Time To Notice What The Daily Texture Of Their Thoughts Was In Their Calm Intervals, Whereas With Us The Intervals Are All.

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

It Is Easier To Make A Saint Out Of A Libertine Than Out Of A Prig.

Saints And Sinners

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.

For A Man Who Has Done His Natural Duty, Death Is As Natural As Sleep.

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

Better Not Be A Hero Than Work Oneself Up Into Heroism By Shouting Lies.

In Unphilosophical Minds Any Rare Or Unexpected Thing Excites Wonder, While In Philosophical Minds The Familiar Excites Wonder Also.

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.

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

The Universe, As Far As We Can Observe It, Is A Wonderful And Immense Engine.... If We Dramatize Its Life And Conceive Its Spirit, We Are Filled With Wonder, Terror And Amusement, So Magnificent Is The Spirit.

The Effort Of Art Is To Keep What Is Interesting In Existence, To Recreate It In The Eternal.

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.

A String Of Excited, Fugitive, Miscellaneous Pleasures Is Not Happiness; Happiness Resides In Imaginative Reflection And Judgment, When The Picture Of One's Life, Or Of Human Life, As It Truly Has Been Or Is, Satisfies The Will, And Is Gladly Accepted.

Order, For A Liberal, Means Only Peace; And The Hope Of A Profound Peace Was One Of The Chief Motives In The Liberal Movement. Concessions And Tolerance And Equality Would Thus Have Really Led To Peace, And To Peace Of The Most Radical Kind, The Peace Of Moral Extinction.

The Human Race, In Its Intellectual Life, Is Organized Like The Bees: The Masculine Soul Is A Worker, Sexually Atrophied, And Essentially Dedicated To Impersonal And Universal Arts; The Feminine Is Queen, Infinite Fertile, Omnipresent In Its Brooding Industry, But Passive And Abounding In Intuitions Without Method And Passions Without Justice.

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

I Believe In The Possibility Of Happiness, If One Cultivates Intuition And Outlives The Grosser Passions, Including Optimism.

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.

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

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.

Art Is A Delayed Echo.

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.

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

Any Attempt To Speak Without Speaking Any Particular Language Is Not More Hopeless Than The Attempt To Have A Religion That Shall Be No Religion In Particular.... Every Living And Healthy Religion Has A Marked Idiosyncrasy. Its Power Consists In Its Special And Surprising Message And The Bias Which That Revelation Gives To Life.

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

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

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

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

Oaths Are The Fossils Of Piety.

American Life Is A Powerful Solvent. It Seems To Neutralize Every Intellectual Element, However Tough And Alien It May Be, And To Fuse It In The Native Good Will, Complacency, Thoughtlessness, And Optimism.

The Primary Use Of Conversation Is To Satisfy The Impulse To Talk.

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

Beauty Is A Pledge Of The Possible Conformity Between The Soul And Nature, And Consequently A Ground Of Faith In The Supremacy Of The Good.

Chaos Is Perhaps At The Bottom Of Everything.

Men Have Always Been The Victims Of Trifles, But When They Were Uncomfortable And Passionate, And In Constant Danger, They Hardly Had Time To Notice What The Daily Texture Of Their Thoughts Was In Their Calm Intervals, Whereas With Us The Intervals Are All.

Depression Is Rage Spread Thin.

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

If Clearness About Things Produces A Fundamental Despair, A Fundamental Despair In Turn Produces A Remarkable Clearness Or Even Playfulness About Ordinary Matters.

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.

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

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.

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.

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

The More Rational An Institution Is The Less It Suffers By Making Concessions To Others.

Tyrants Are Seldom Free; The Cares And The Instruments Of Their Tyranny Enslave Them.

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.

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

All His Life He [the American] Jumps Into The Train After It Has Started And Jumps Out Before It Has Stopped; And He Never Once Gets Left Behind, Or Breaks A Leg.

Rejection Is A Form Of Self-assertion. You Have Only To Look Back Upon Yourself As A Person Who Hates This Or That To Discover What It Is That You Secretly Love.

Popular Poets Are The Parish Priests Of The Muse, Retailing Her Ancient Divinations To A Long Since Converted Public.

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

It Would Be Hard To Conceive A System Of Instincts More Nicely Adjusted, Where The Constituents Should Represent Or Support One Another Better. The Husband Has An Interest In Protecting The Wife, She In Serving The Husband. The Weaker Gains In Authority And Safety, The Wilder And More Unconcerned Finds A Help-mate At Home To Take Thought Of His Daily Necessities. Parents Lend Children Their Experience And A Vicarious Memory; Children Endow Their Parents With A Vicarious Immortality.

Matters Of Religion Should Never Be Matters Of Controversy. We Neither Argue With A Lover About His Taste, Nor Condemn Him, If We Are Just, For Knowing So Human A Passion.

Nothing Can Be Lower Or More Wholly Instrumental Than The Substance And Cause Of All Things.

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.

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

It Is A Pleasant Surprise To Him (the Pure Mathematician) And An Added Problem If He Finds That The Arts Can Use His Calculations, Or That The Senses Can Verify Them, Much As If A Composer Found That Sailors Could Heave Better When Singing His Songs.

Nietzsche Said That The Earth Has Been A Madhouse Long Enough. Without Contradicting Him We Might Perhaps Soften The Expression, And Say That Philosophy Has Been Long Enough An Asylum For Enthusiasts.

To Know What People Really Think, Pay Regard To What They Do, Rather Than What They Say.

In Each Person I Catch The Fleeting Suggestion Of Something Beautiful And Swear Eternal Friendship With That.

Society Is Like The Air, Necessary To Breathe But Insufficient To Live On.

Only The Dead Have Seen The End Of The War.

Happiness Is Impossible, And Even Inconceivable, To A Mind Without Scope And Without Pause, A Mind Driven By Craving, Pleasure, Or Fear. To Be Happy, You Must Be Reasonable, Or You Must Be Tamed. You Must Have Taken The Measure Of Your Powers, Tasted The Fruits Of Your Passion, And Learned Your Place In The World And What Things In It Can Really Serve You. To Be Happy, You Must Be Wise.

Skepticism Is A Discipline Fit To Purify The Mind Of Prejudice And Render It All The More Apt, When The Time Comes, To Believe And To Act Wisely.

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

Advertising Is The Modern Substitute For Argument, Its Function Is To Make The Worse Appear The Better Article. A Confused Competition Of All Propagandas -- Those Insults To Human Nature -- Is Carried On By The Most Expert Psychological Methods -- For Instance, By Always Repeating A Lie.

Before You Contradict An Old Man, My Fair Friend, You Should Endeavour To Understand Him.

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.

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.

Fear First Created The Gods.

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.

Truth Is One Of The Realities Covered In The Eclectic Religion Of Our Fathers By The Idea Of God. Awe Very Properly Hangs About It, Since It Is The Immovable Standard And Silent Witness Of All Our Memories And Assertions; And The Past And The Future, Which In Our Anxious Life Are So Differently Interesting And So Differently Dark, Are One Seamless Garment For The Truth, Shining Like The Sun.

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

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.

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.

At Best, The True Philosopher Can Fulfil His Mission Very Imperfectly, Which Is To Pilot Himself, Or At Most A Few Voluntary Companions Who May Find Themselves In The Same Boat.

Beautiful Things, When Taste Is Formed, Are Obviously And Unaccountably Beautiful.

History Is Nothing But Assisted And Recorded Memory.

If A Man Really Knew Himself He Would Utterly Despise The Ignorant Notions Others Might Form On A Subject In Which He Had Such Matchless Opportunities For Observation.

The Need Of Exercise Is A Modern Superstition, Invented By People Who Ate Too Much And Had Nothing To Think About.

Words Are Weapons, And It Is Dangerous . . . To Borrow Them From The Arsenal Of The Enemy.

A Friend's Only Gift Is Himself.

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

The Loftiest Edifices Need The Deepest Foundations.

For Gold Is Tried In The Fire And Acceptable Men In The Furnace Of Adversity.

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.

Art Like Life, Should Be Free, Since Both Are Experimental.

It Would Repel Me Less To Be A Hangman Than A Soldier, Because The One Is Obliged To Put To Death Only Criminals Sentenced By The Law, But The Other Kills Honest Men Who Like Himself Bathe In Innocent Blood At The Bidding Of Some Superior.

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

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

Is It Indeed From The Experience Of Beauty And Happiness, From The Occasional Harmony Between Our Nature And Our Environment, That We Draw Our Conception Of The Divine Life.

Oxford, The Paradise Of Dead Philosophies.

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.

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

Boston Was A Moral And Intellectual Nursery, Always Busy Applying First Principles To Trifles.

Love Make Us Poets, And The Approach Of Death Should Make Us Philosophers.

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

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

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

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

O World, Thou Choosest Not The Better Part! It Is Not Wisdom To Be Only Wise, And On The Inward Vision Close The Eyes, But It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart. Columbus Found A World, And Had No Chart, Save One That Faith Deciphered In The Skies; To Trust The Soul's Invincible Surmise Was All His Science And His Only Art.

Heaven Is To Be At Peace With Things.

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

Each Religion, So Dear To Those Whose Life It Sanctifies, And Fulfilling So Necessary A Function In The Society That Has Adopted It, Necessarily Contradicts Every Other Religion, And Probably Contradicts Itself.

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.

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

Ideal Society Is A Drama Enacted Exclusively In The Imagination.

It Would Hardly Be Possible To Exaggerate Man's Wretchedness If It Were Not So Easy To Overestimate His Sensibility

Nothing So Much Enhances A Good As To Make Sacrifices For It.

Making Sacrifices

Sacrifice For Others

Columbus Found A World, And Had No Chart Save One That Faith Deciphered In The Skies.

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

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

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

Though The Heart Wear The Garment Of Its Sorrow And Be Not Happy Like A Naked Star, Yet From The Thought Of Peace Some Peace We Borrow, Some Rapture From The Rapture Felt Afar.

The God To Whom Depth In Philosophy Bring Back Men's Minds Is Far From Being The Same From Whom A Little Philosophy Estranges Them

The Strongest Feelings Assigned To The Conscience Are Not Moral Feelings At All; They Express Merely Physical Antipathies.

One's Friends Are That Part Of The Human Race With Which One Can Be Human.

The Tide Of Evolution Carries Everything Before It, Thoughts No Less Than Bodies, And Persons No Less Than Nations.

There Is A Prodigious Selfishness In Dreams: They Live Perfectly Deaf And Invulnerable Amid The Cries Of The Real World.

Philosophers Are Very Severe Towards Other Philosophers Because They Expect Too Much.

. . . Until The Curtain Was Rung Down On The Last Act Of The Drama (and It Might Have No Last Act!) He Wished The Intellectual Cripples And The Moral Hunchbacks Not To Be Jeered At; Perhaps They Might Turn Out To Be The Heroes Of The Play.

All Spiritual Interests Are Supported By Animal Life.

It Is Not Society's Fault That Most Men Seem To Miss Their Vocation. Most Men Have No Vocation.

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

The Man Who Would Emancipate Art From Discipline And Reason Is Trying To Elude Rationality, Not Merely In Art, But In All Existence.

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

The Scientific Value Of Truth Is Not, However, Ultimate Or Absolute. It Rests Partly On Practical, Partly On Aesthetic Interests. As Our Ideas Are Gradually Brought Into Conformity With The Facts By The Painful Process Of Selection,-for Intuition Runs Equally Into Truth And Into Error, And Can Settle Nothing If Not Controlled By Experience,-we Gain Vastly In Our Command Over Our Environment. This Is The Fundamental Value Of Natural Science

Philosophers Are As Jealous As Women; Each Wants A Monopoly Of Praise.

Eternal Vigilance Is The Price Of Knowledge.

Eternal Vigilance

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.

It Is A Revenge The Devil Sometimes Takes Upon The Virtuous, That He Entraps Them By The Force Of The Very Passion They Have Suppressed And Think Themselves Superior To.

To Fight Is A Radical Instinct; If Men Have Nothing Else To Fight Over They Will Fight Over Words, Fancies, Or Women, Or They Will Fight Because They Dislike Each Other's Looks, Or Because They Have Met Walking In Opposite Directions.

In Endowing Us With Memory, Nature Has Revealed To Us A Truth Utterly Unimaginable To The Unreflective Creation, The Truth Of Immortality....the Most Ideal Human Passion Is Love, Which Is Also The Most Absolute And Animal And One Of The Most Ephemeral.

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

Every Real Object Must Cease To Be What It Seemed, And None Could Ever Be What The Whole Soul Desired.

The Mediocrity Of Everything In The Great World Of Today Is Simply Appalling. We Live In Intellectual Slums.

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

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

Old Places And Old Persons In Their Turn, When Spirit Dwells In Them, Have An Intrinsic Vitality Of Which Youth Is Incapable, Precisely, The Balance And Wisdom That Come From Long Perspectives And Broad Foundations

Proofs Are The Last Thing Looked For By A Truly Religious Mind Which Feels The Imaginary Fitness Of Its Faith.

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

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

Words Of Wisdom

Disillusionment

What Better Comfort Have We, Or What Other Profit In Living Than To Feed, Sobered By The Truth Of Nature, Awhile Upon Her Beauty, And Hand Her Torch Of Gladness To The Ages Following After?

The Body Is An Instrument, The Mind Its Function, The Witness And Reward Of Its Operation.

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

Artists Have No Less Talents Than Ever, Their Taste, Their Vision, Their Sentiment Are Often Interesting; They Are Mighty In Their Independence And Feeble Only In Their Works.

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

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

Art Is The Response To The Demand For Entertainment, For The Stimulation Of Our Senses And Imagination, And Truth Enters Into It Only As It Subserves These Ends.

The Wonder Of An Artist's Performance Grows With The Range Of His Penetration, With The Instinctive Sympathy That Makes Him, In His Mortal Isolation, Considerate Of Other Men's Fate And A Great Diviner Of Their Secret, So That His Work Speaks To Them Kindly, With A Deeper Assurance Than They Could Have Spoken With To Themselves.

I Love Moving Water, I Love Ships, I Love The Sharp Definition, The Concentrated Humanity, The Sublime Solitude Of Life At Sea. The Dangers Of It Only Make Present To Us The Peril Inherent In All Existence, Which The Stupid, Ignorant, Un-travelled Land-worm Never Discovers; And The Art Of It, So Mathematical, So Exact, So Rewarding To Intelligence, Appeals To Courage And Clears The Mind Of Superstition, While Filling It With Humility And True Religion.

The Spirit's Foe In Man Has Not Been Simplicity, But Sophistication.

The Same Battle In The Clouds Will Be Known To The Deaf Only As Lightning And To The Blind Only As Thunder.

It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart.

When Men And Women Agree, It Is Only In Their Conclusions; Their Reasons Are Always Different.

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

Friends Need Not Agree In Everything Or Go Always Together, Or Have No Comparable Other Friendships Of The Same Intimacy.

Man Is As Full Of Potential As He Is Of Importance.

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.

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

The Only Kind Of Reform Usually Possible Is Reform From Within; A More Intimate Study And More Intelligent Use Of The Traditional Forms.

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

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

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.

Happiness Is The Only Sanction Of Life; Where Happiness Fails, Existence Remains A Mad And Lamentable Experiment.

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.

What Is False In The Science Of Facts May Be True In The Science Of Values.

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.

The Loneliest Woman In The World Is A Woman Without A Close Woman Friend.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

We Are Not Compelled In Naturalism, Or Even In Materialism, To Ignore Immaterial Things; The Point Is That Any Immaterial Things Which Are Recognized Shall Be Regarded As Names, Aspects, Functions, Or Concomitant Products Of Those Physical Things Among Which Action Goes On.

Music Is A Means Of Giving Form To Our Inner Feelings, Without Attaching Them To Events Or Objects In The World.

There Is No Dunce Like A Mature Dunce.

It Is Possible To Be A Master In False Philosophy, Easier, In Fact, Than To Be A Master In The Truth, Because A False Philosophy Can Be Made As Simple And Consistent As One Pleases.

In The Contemplation Of Beauty We Are Raised Above Ourselves, The Passions Are Silenced And We Are Happy In The Recognition Of A Good That We Do Not Seek To Possess.

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.

Our Occasional Madness Is Less Wonderful Than Our Occasional Sanity.

Existence Is A Miracle, And, Morally Considered, A Free Gift From Moment To Moment.

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

Faith In The Supernatural Is A Desperate Wager Made By Man At The Lowest Ebb Of His Fortunes.

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.

There Is Nothing Sweeter Than To Be Sympathized With.

Christianity Persecuted, Tortured, And Burned. Like A Hound It Tracked The Very Scent Of Heresy. It Kindled Wars, And Nursed Furious Hatreds And Ambitions... Man, Far From Being Freed From His Natural Passions, Was Plunged Into Artificial Ones Quite As Violent And Much More Disappointing.

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

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.

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Life Is; But Both Have An Ideal Extension Which Lends Utility To Its Conditions.

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.

Fashion Is Something Barbarous, For It Produces Innovation Without Reason And Imitation Without Benefit.

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

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

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

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

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

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.

Saints Cannot Arise Where There Have Been No Warriors, Nor Philosophers Where A Prying Beast Does Not Remain Hidden In The Depths.

To Call War The Soil Of Courage And Virtue Is Like Calling Debauchery The Soil Of Love.

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

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

The One Who Does Not Remember History Is Bound To Live Through It Again

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