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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.

-George Santayana

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Nietzsche Was Personally More

George Santayana

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

The Profoundest Affinities Are Those Most Readily Felt, And Though A Thousand Later Considerations May Overlay And Override Them, They Remain A Background And Standard For All Happiness. If We Trace Them Out We Succeed.

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

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

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

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

To Understand Oneself Is The Classic Form Of Consolation; To Elude Oneself Is The Romantic.

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Unmitigated Seriousness Is Always Out Of Place In Human Affairs.

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

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.

Sometimes We Have To Change The Truth In Order To Remember It.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Poetry Is An Attenuation, A Rehandling, An Echo Of Crude Experience; It Is Itself A Theoretic Vision Of Things At Arm's Length.

Why Shouldnt Things Be Largely Absurd, Futile, And Transitory? They Are So, And We Are So, And They And We Go Together.

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

Animals Are Born And Bred In Litters. Solitude Grows Blessed And Peaceful Only In Old Age.

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

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

There Is Nothing Impossible In The Existence Of The Supernatural: Its Existence Seems To Me Decidedly Probable.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

People Are Usually More Firmly Convinced That Their Opinions Are Precious Than That They Are True.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

The Lover Knows Much More About Absolute Good And Universal Beauty Than Any Logician Or Theologian, Unless The Latter, Too, Be Lovers In Disguise.

There Is Nothing Sacred About Convention; There Is Nothing Sacred About Primitive Passions Or Whims; But The Fact That A Convention Exists Indicates That A Way Of Living Has Been Devised Capable Of Maintaining Itself.

Culture Is On The Horns Of This Dilemma: If Profound And Noble It Must Remain Rare, If Common It Must Become Mean.

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.

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.

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

Let A Man Once Overcome His Selfish Terror At His Own Finitude, And His Finitude Itself Is, In One Sense, Overcome.

Every Nation Thinks Its Own Madness Normal And Requisite; More Passion And More Fancy It Calls Folly, Less It Calls Imbecility.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Universe, So Far As We Can Observe It, Is A Wonderful And Immense Engine; Its Extent, Its Order, Its Beauty, Its Cruelty, Makes It Alike Impressive.

Not To Believe In Love Is A Great Sign Of Dullness. There Are Some People So Indirect And Lumbering That They Think All Real Affection Rests On Circumstantial Evidence.

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.

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.

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?

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

Chaos Is Perhaps At The Bottom Of Everything.

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

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

Words Of Wisdom

Disillusionment

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

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.

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

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

Real Unselfishness Consists In Sharing The Interests Of Others.

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

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.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt Only When It Breeds Inattention.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

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

Fun Is A Good Thing But Only When It Spoils Nothing Better.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Time Is Like An Enterprising Manager Always Bent On Staging Some New And Surprising Production, Without Knowing Very Well What It Will Be.

Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

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.

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

Logic, Like Language, Is Partly A Free Construction And Partly A Means Of Symbolizing And Harnessing In Expression The Existing Diversities Of Things; And Whilst Some Languages, Given A Man's Constitution And Habits, May Seem More Beautiful And Convenient To Him Than Others, It Is A Foolish Heat In A Patriot To Insist That Only His Native Language Is Intelligible Or Right.

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

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

The World Is Not Respectable; It Is Mortal, Tormented, Confused, Deluded Forever; But It Is Shot Through With Beauty, With Love, With Glints Of Courage And Laughter; And In These, The Spirit Blooms Timidly, And Struggles To The Light Amid The Thorns.

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

Saints And Sinners

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

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.

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

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.

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

Columbus Gave The World Another World.

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.

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.

Art Supplies Constantly To Contemplation What Nature Seldom Affords In Concrete Experience - The Union Of Life And Peace.

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

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

To Be Happy You Must Have Taken The Measure Of Your Powers, Tasted The Fruits Of Your Passion, And Learned Your Place In The World.

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

Love, Whether Sexual, Parental, Or Fraternal, Is Essentially Sacrificial, And Prompts A Man To Give His Life For His Friends.

Depression Is Rage Spread Thin.

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

Memory Itself Is An Internal Rumour.

To Turn Events Into Ideas Is The Function Of Literature.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Docility Is The Observable Half Of Reason.

Never Build Your Emotional Life On The Weaknesses Of Others.

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

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

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

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

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

Oaths Are The Fossils Of Piety.

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

Towers In A Modern Town Are A Frill And A Survival; They Seem Like The Raised Hands Of The Various Churches, Afraid Of Being Overlooked, And Saying To The Forgetful Public, Here I Am! Or Perhaps They Are Rival Lightning Rods, Saying To The Emanations Of Divine Grace, "please Strike Here!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Photography At First Was Asked To Do Nothing But Embalm Our Best Smiles For The Benefit Of Our Friends And Our Best Clothes For The Amusement Of Posterity. Neither Thing Lasts, And Photography Came As A Welcome Salve To Keep Those Precious, If Slightly Ridiculous, Things A Little Longer In The World.

To Drink In The Spirit Of A Place You Should Be Not Only Alone But Unhurried.

The Theatre, For All Its Artifices, Depicts Life In A Sense More Truly Than History, Because The Medium Has A Kindred Movement To That Of Real Life, Though An Artificial Setting And Form.

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.

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.

Children Are Natural Mythologists: They Beg To Be Told Tales, And Love Not Only To Invent But To Enact Falsehoods.

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

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.

In Greece Wise Men Speak And Fools Decide.

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

... So In Love The Heart Surrenders Itself Entirely To The One Being That Has Known How To Touch It. That Being Is Not Selected; It Is Recognised And Obeyed.

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.

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

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

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

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

By "essence" I Understand A Universal, Of Any Degree Of Complexity And Definition, Which May Be Given Immediately, Whether To Sense Or To Thought.... This Object Of Pure Sense Or Pure Thought, With No Belief Superadded, An Object Inwardly Complete And Individual, But Without External Relations Or Physical Status, Is What I Call An Essence.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Each Religion Necessarily Contradicts Every Other Religion, And Probably Contradicts Itself. Religions, Like Languages, Are Necessary Rivals. What Religion A Man Shall Have Is A Historical Accident, Quite As Much As What Language He Shall Speak.

History Is Always Written Wrong, And So Always Needs To Be Rewritten. ...what Is Interesting Is Brought Forward As If It Had Been Central And Efficacious In The March Of Events, And Harmonies Are Turned Into Causes. Kings And Generals Are Endowed With Motives Appropriate To What The Historian Values In Their Actions; Plans Are Imputed To Them Prophetic Of Their Actual Achievements, While The Thoughts That Really Preoccupied Them Remain Buried In Absolute Oblivion.

In Any Close Society It Is More Urgent To Restrain Others Than To Be Free Oneself. Hence The Tendency For The Central Authority To Absorb And Supersede Such As Are Local Or Delegated.

I Believe In General In A Dualism Between Facts And The Ideas Of Those Facts In Human Heads.

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.

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 Living Have Never Shown Me How To Live.

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.

The Unforgivable Sin Is The Refusal To Pardon.

Unforgivable Sin

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

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

Experience Seems To Most Of Us To Lead To Conclusions, But Empiricism Has Sworn Never To Draw Them.

The Love Of All-inclusiveness Is As Dangerous In Philosophy As In Art.

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

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.

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

Tolerated People Are Never Conciliated. They Live On, But The Aroma Of Their Life Is Lost.

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

The Working Of Great Institutions Is Mainly The Result Of A Vast Mass Of Routine, Petty Malice, Self Interest, Carelessness And Sheer Mistake. Only A Residual Fraction Is Thought.

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.

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

By Nature's Kindly Disposition Most Questions Which It Is Beyond A Man's Power To Answer Do Not Occur To Him At All.

Questions And Answers

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

It Is A Great Bond To Dislike The Same Things.

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.

Sanctity And Genius Are As Rebellious As Vice.

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

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

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.

A Child Educated Only At School Is An Uneducated Child.

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.

Intelligence Is Quickness In Seeing Things As They Are.

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