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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.

-George Santayana

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Never Have I Enjoyed

George Santayana

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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.

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

Our Occasional Madness Is Less Wonderful Than Our Occasional Sanity.

There Is Nothing Sweeter Than To Be Sympathized With.

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

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

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.

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

There Is (as I Now Find) No Remorse For Time Long Past, Even For What May Have Mortified Us Or Made Us Ashamed Of Ourselves When It Was Happening: There Is A Pleasant Panoramic Sense Of What It All Was And How It All Had To Be. Why, If We Are Not Vain Or Snobbish, Need We Desire That It Should Have Been Different? The Better Things We Missed May Yet Be Enjoyed Or Attained By Someone Else Somewhere: Why Isn't That Just As Good? And There Is No Regret, Either, In The Sense Of Wishing The Past To Return, Or Missing It: It Is Quite Real Enough As It Is, There At Its Own Date And Place.

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

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

Most Men's Conscience, Habits, And Opinions Are Borrowed From Convention And Gather Continually Comforting Assurances From The Same Social Consensus That Originally Suggested Them.

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

A Man Is Morally Free When, In Full Possession Of His Living Humanity, He Judges The World, And Judges Other Men, With Uncompromising Sincerity.

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

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

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.

The Human Mind Is Not Rich Enough To Drive Many Horses Abreast And Wants One General Scheme, Under Which It Strives To Bring Everything.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

Religion Is The Natural Reaction Of The Imagination When Confronted By The Difficulties In A Truculent World.

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.

The Vital Straining Towards An Ideal, Definite But Latent, When It Dominates A Whole Life, May Express That Ideal More Fully Than Could The Best Chosen Words.

Gnomic Wisdom, However, Is Notoriously Polychrome, And Proverbs Depend For Their Truth Entirely On The Occasion They Are Applied To. Almost Every Wise Saying Has An Opposite One, No Less Wise, To Balance It.

Character Is The Basis Of Happiness And Happiness The Sanction Of Character.

... Even If Lucretius Was Wrong, And The Soul Is Immortal, It Is Nevertheless Steadily Changing Its Interests And Its Possessions.our Lives Are Mortal If Our Soul Is Not; And The Sentiment Which Reconciled Lucretius To Death Is As Much Needed If We Are To Face Many Deaths, As If We Are To Face Only One.

As Widowers Proverbially Marry Again, So A Man With The Habit Of Friendship Always Finds New Friends.

Lost Friendship

The Fates, Like An Absent-minded Printer, Seldom Allow A Single Line To Stand Perfect And Unmarred.

A Conceived Thing Is Doubly A Product Of Mind, More A Product Of Mind, If You Will, Than An Idea, Since Ideas Arise, So To Speak,by The Mind's Inertia And Conceptions Of Things By Its Activity. Ideas Are Mental Sediment; Conceived Things Are Mental Growths.

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

The Truth Is Cruel, But It Can Be Loved, And It Makes Free Those Who Have Loved It.

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

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

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.

Nothing You Can Lose By Dying Is Half As Precious As The Readiness To Die, Which Is Man's Charter Of Nobility.

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

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

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.

Love Is At Once More Animal Than Friendship And More Divine.

Wisdom Comes From Disillusionment.

Disillusionment

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

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

A Fanatical Imagination Cannot Regard God As Just Unless He Is Represented As Infinitely Cruel.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Reason And Happiness Are Like Other Flowers; They Wither When Plucked.

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

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

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.

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

Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Facts.

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.

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

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

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.

A Musical Education Is Necessary For Musical Judgement. What Most People Relish Is Hardly Music; It Is Rather A Drowsy Reverie Relieved By Nervous Thrills.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

There Must ... Be In Our Very Nature A Very Radical And Widespread Tendency To Observe Beauty, And To Value It. No Account Of The Principles Of The Mind Can Be At All Adequate That Passes Over So Conspicuous A Faculty.

It Is A Great Advantage For A System Of Philosophy To Be Substantially True.

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.

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

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.

Tomes Of Aesthetic Criticism Hang On A Few Moments Of Real Delight And Intuition.

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

You And I Possess Manifold Ideal Bonds In The Interests We Share; But Each Of Us Has His Poor Body And His Irremediable, Incommunicable Dreams.

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.

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.

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

It Is The Acme Of Life To Understand Life.

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.

Language Is Like Money, Without Which Specific Relative Values May Well Exist And Be Felt, But Cannot Be Reduced To A Common Denominator.

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

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.

Life Is Not A Spectacle Or A Feast; It Is A Predicament.

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 Family Is One Of Nature's Masterpieces.

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

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

Christianity Persecuted, Tortured, And Burned. Like A Hound It Tracked The Very Scent Of Heresy. It Kindled Wars, And Nursed Furious Hatreds And Ambitions. It Sanctified, Quite Like Mohammedism, Extermination And Tyranny. All This Would Have Been Impossible If, Like Buddhism, It Had Looked Only For Peace And The Liberation Of Souls. It Looked Beyond; It Dreamt Of Infinite Blisses And Crowns It Should Be Crowned With Before An Electrified Universe And An Applauding God... Buddhism Had Tried To Quiet A Sick World With Anesthetics; Christianity Sought To Purge It With Fire.

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.

Guard You Thoughts As You Would Your Wallet. Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

Never Build Your Emotional Life On The Weaknesses Of Others.

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.

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

Society Itself Is An Accident To The Spirit, And If Society In Any Of Its Forms Is To Be Justified Morally It Must Be Justified At The Bar Of The Individual Conscience.

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.

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

Nature Drives With A Loose Rein And Vitality Of Any Sort Can Blunder Through Many A Predicament In Which Reason Would Despair.

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

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

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.

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

Real Unselfishness Consists In Sharing The Interests Of Others.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt Only When It Breeds Inattention.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

Government Is The Political Representative Of A Natural Equilibrium, Of Custom, Of Inertia; It Is By No Means A Representative Of Reason.

Fear First Created The Gods.

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.

A Friend's Only Gift Is Himself.

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

To Keep Beauty In Its Place Is To Make All Things Beautiful.

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.

A Country Without A Memory Is A Country Of Madmen.

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

In The Concert Of Nature It Is Hard To Keep In Tune With Oneself If One Is Out Of Tune With Everything Else

If Pain Could Have Cured Us We Should Long Ago Have Been Saved.

Art Is A Delayed Echo.

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

The Pride Of The Artisan In His Art And Its Uses Is Pride In Himself...it Is In His Skill And Ability To Make Things As He Wishes Them To Be That He Rejoices.

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.

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

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

The Sophisticated Concern About Art Sinks Before A Spontaneous Love Of Reality, And I Thank The Photograph For Being So Transparent A Vehicle For Things.

He Thinks He Believes Only What He Sees, But He Is Much Better At Believing Than At Seeing.

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

Repetition Is The Only Form Of Permanence That Nature Can Achieve.

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

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

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

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

There Is A Kind Of Courtesy In Skepticism. It Would Be An Offense Against Polite Conventions To Press Our Doubts Too Far.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Soul, Too Has Her Virginity And Must Bleed A Little Before Bearing Fruit.

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

Chaos Is Perhaps At The Bottom Of Everything.

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

We Need Sometimes To Escape Into Open Solitudes, Into Aimlessness, Into The Moral Holiday Of Running Some Pure Hazard In Order To Sharpen The Edge Of Life, To Taste Hardship, And To Be Compelled To Work Desperately For A Moment At No Matter What.

Men Become Superstitious, Not Because They Have Too Much Imagination, But Because They Are Not Aware That They Have Any.

America Is The Greatest Of Opportunities And The Worst Of Influences.

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

With An Artist No Sane Man Quarrels, Any More Than With The Colour Of A Child's Eyes.

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

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

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

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.

The Soul Is The Voice Of The Body's Interests.

One Real World Is Enough.

The World Is A Perpetual Caricature Of Itself; At Every Moment It Is The Mockery And The Contradiction Of What It Is Pretending To Be.

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

Words Of Wisdom

Disillusionment

A Buoyant And Full-blooded Soul Has Quick Senses And Miscellaneous Sympathies: It Changes With The Changing World; And When Not Too Much Starved Or Thwarted By Circumstances, It Finds All Things Vivid And Comic. Life Is Free Play Fundamentally And Would Like To Be Free Play Altogether.

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.

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

Knowledge Is Not Eating, And We Cannot Expect To Devour And Possess What We Mean. Knowledge Is Recognition Of Something Absent; It Is A Salutation, Not An Embrace.

Uselessness Is A Fatal Accusation To Bring Against Any Act Which Is Done For Its Presumed Utility, But Those Which Are Done For Their Own Sake Are Their Own Justification.

A Sanctity Hangs About The Sources Of Our Being, Whether Physical, Social, Or Imaginary.

My Remembrance Of The Past Is A Novel I Am Constantly Recomposing; And It Would Not Be A Historical Novel, But Sheer Fiction, If The Material Events Which Mark And Ballast My Career Had Not Their Public Dates And Characters Scientifically Discoverable.

Historical Novels

There Is No Greater Stupidity Or Meanness Than To Take Uniformity For An Ideal.

The Highest Form Of Vanity Is Love Of Fame.

A Simple Life Is Its Own Reward.

Sanctity And Genius Are As Rebellious As Vice.

I Have No Axe To Grind; Only My Thoughts To Burnish.

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.

There Are Three Traps That Strangle Philosophy: The Church, The Marriage Bed, And The Professor's Chair.

Man's Most Serious Activity Is Play.

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

Beauty Is Objectified Pleasure.

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

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

To Me, It Seems A Dreadful Indignity To Have A Soul Controlled By Geography.

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.

We Must Welcome The Future, Remembering That Soon It Will Be The Past; And We Must Respect The Past, Remembering That It Was Once All That Was Humanly Possible.

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

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.

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

Professional Philosophers Are Usually Only Apologists: That Is, They Are Absorbed In Defending Some Vested Illusion Or Some Eloquent Idea. Like Lawyers Or Detectives, They Study The Case For Which They Are Retained.

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

America Is A Young Country With An Old Mentality.

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.

You Cannot Prove Realism To A Complete Sceptic Or Idealist; But You Can Show An Honest Man That He Is Not A Complete Sceptic Or Idealist, But A Realist At Heart. So Long As He Is Alive His Sincere Philosophy Must Fulfil The Assumptions Of His Life And Not Destroy Him.

Injustice In This World Is Not Something Comparative; The Wrong Is Deep, Clear, And Absolute In Each Private Fate.

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 .

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.

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

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.

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

...science Is Nothing But Developed Perception, Interpreted Intent, Common-sense Rounded Out And Minutely Articulated. It Is Therefore As Much An Instinctive Product, As Much A Stepping Forth Of Human Courage In The Dark, As Is Any Inevitable Dream Or Impulsive Action.

To Be An American Is Of Itself Almost A Moral Condition, An Education, And A Career.

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

The Living Have Never Shown Me How To Live.

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

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