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Religious Doctrines Would Do Well To Withdraw Their Pretension To Be Dealing With Matters Of Fact. That Pretension Is Not Only The Source Of The Conflicts Of Religion With Science And The Vain And Bitter Controversies Of Sects; It Is Also The Cause Of The Impurity And Incoherence Of Religion In The Soul.

-George Santayana

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Religious Doctrines Would Do

George Santayana

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Religious Doctrines Would Do Well To Withdraw Their Pretension To Be Dealing With Matters Of Fact. That Pretension Is Not Only The Source Of The Conflicts Of Religion With Science And The Vain And Bitter Controversies Of Sects; It Is Also The Cause Of The Impurity And Incoherence Of Religion In The Soul.

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All Living Souls Welcome Whatsoever They Are Ready To Cope With; All Else They Ignore, Or Pronounce To Be Monstrous And Wrong, Or Deny To Be Possible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Quality Of Wit Inspires More Admiration Than Confidence

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

Beauty Is Objectified Pleasure.

... 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Is No Cure For Birth And Death Save To Enjoy The Interval. The Dark Background Which Death Supplies Brings Out The Tender Colours Of Life In All Their Purity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Religious Doctrines Would Do Well To Withdraw Their Pretension To Be Dealing With Matters Of Fact. That Pretension Is Not Only The Source Of The Conflicts Of Religion With Science And The Vain And Bitter Controversies Of Sects; It Is Also The Cause Of The Impurity And Incoherence Of Religion In The Soul.

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Making Sacrifices

Sacrifice For Others

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

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

Knowledge Of What Is Possible Is The Beginning Of Happiness.

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

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.

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

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.

Chaos Is Perhaps At The Bottom Of Everything.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Man's Most Serious Activity Is Play.

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

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

Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Facts.

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.

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

Our Occasional Madness Is Less Wonderful Than Our Occasional Sanity.

Docility Is The Observable Half Of Reason.

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

Sanity Is Madness Put To Good Use.

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.

It Is A Great Bond To Dislike The Same Things.

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

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

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.

Perhaps The Universe Is Nothing But An Equilibrium Of Idiocies.

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

Intelligence Is Quickness In Seeing Things As They Are.

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

To Knock A Thing Down, Especially If It Is Cocked At An Arrogant Angle, Is A Deep Delight Of The Blood.

The Dreamer Can Know No Truth, Not Even About His Dream, Except By Awaking Out Of It.

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.

To Turn Events Into Ideas Is The Function Of Literature.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

There Is Nothing Sweeter Than To Be Sympathized With.

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

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.

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.

Nature In Denying Us Perennial Youth Has At Least Invited Us To Become Unselfish And Noble.

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

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

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

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

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

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

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

A Simple Life Is Its Own Reward.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

America Is A Young Country With An Old Mentality.

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

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

Fear First Created The Gods.

Oaths Are The Fossils Of Piety.

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

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

Imagination Is Potentially Infinite. Though Actually We Are Limited To The Types Of Experience For Which We Possess Organs, Those Organs Are Somewhat Plastic. Opportunity Will Change Their Scope And Even Their Center.

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

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

Men Almost Universally Have Acknowledged Providence, But That Fact Has Had No Force To Destroy Natural Aversions And Fears In The Presence Of Events.

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

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.

Columbus Gave The World Another World.

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

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

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

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.

It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart.

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

Advertising Is The Modern Substitute For Argument; Its Function Is To Make The Worse Appear The Better.

Since Barbarism Has Its Pleasures It Naturally Has Its Apologists.

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

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

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.

Well-bred Instinct Meets Reason Halfway

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.

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

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

Even The Most Inspired Verse, Which Boasts Not Without A Relative Justification To Be Immortal, Becomes In The Course Of Ages A Scarcely Legible Hieroglyphic; The Language It Was Written In Dies, A Learned Education And An Imaginative Effort Are Requisite To Catch Even A Vestige Of Its Original Force. Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Substitute Judgments Of Fact For Judgments Of Value Is A Sign Of Pedantic And Borrowed Criticism.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The True Christian Is In All Countries A Pilgrim And A Stranger.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Man Is A Gregarious Animal, And Much More So In His Mind Than In His Body. He May Like To Go Alone For A Walk, But He Hates To Stand Alone In His Opinions.

The Bible Is Literature, Not Dogma.

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

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.

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

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

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.

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

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.

In Greece Wise Men Speak And Fools Decide.

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

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

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

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

Saints And Sinners

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

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

Writing History

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

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

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

One Of The Peculiarities Of Recent Speculation, Especially In America, Is That Ideas Are Abandoned In Virtue Of A Mere Change Of Feeling, Without Any New Evidence Or New Arguments. We Do Not Nowadays Refute Our Predecessors, We Pleasantly Bid Them Good-bye.

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.

The Living Have Never Shown Me How To Live.

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.

... 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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