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The Jealous Man Is So Preoccupied With What He Hasn't Got That He Fails To Appreciate The Value Of What He Has Got. He Loses The Ability To Feel Glad Because The Sun Is Shining. He Doesn't See The Wonder And The Newness Of The Beginning Of Spring.

-William Ralph Inge

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The Jealous Man Is

William Ralph Inge

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The Jealous Man Is So Preoccupied With What He Hasn't Got That He Fails To Appreciate The Value Of What He Has Got. He Loses The Ability To Feel Glad Because The Sun Is Shining. He Doesn't See The Wonder And The Newness Of The Beginning Of Spring.

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The Church Is Only A Secular Institution In Which The Half-educated Speak To The Half-converted.

Many People Believe That They Are Attracted By God, Or By Nature, When They Are Only Repelled By Man.

Don't Break The Silence Unless You Can Improve On It.

The Right Use Of Leisure Is No Doubt A Harder Problem Than The Right Use Of Our Working Hours. The Soul Is Dyed The Color Of Its Leisure Thoughts.

Our Test Is Infallible. Whatever View Of Reality Deepens Our Sense Of The Tremendous Issues Of Life In The World Wherein We Move, Is For Us Nearer The Truth Than Any View Which Diminishes That Sense.

The Modern World Belongs To The Half-educated, A Rather Difficult Class, Because They Do Not Realize How Little They Know.

If The Universe Is Running Down Like A Clock, The Clock Must Have Been Wound Up At A Date Which We Could Name If We Knew It. The World, If It Is To Have An End In Time, Must Have Had A Beginning In Time.

The Vulgar Mind Always Mistakes The Exceptional For The Important.

Beautiful Thoughts Hardly Bring Us To God Until They Are Acted Upon. No One Can Have A True Idea Of Right Until He Does It.

Faith Is An Act Of Self-consecration, In Which The Will, The Intellect, And The Affections All Have Their Place.

Beneath The Dingy Uniformity Of International Fashions In Dress, Man Remains What He Has Always Been; A Splendid Fighting Animal, A Self-sacrificing Hero, And A Blood Thirsty Savage.

When Our First Parents Were Driven Out Of Paradise, Adam Is Believed To Have Remarked To Eve, "my Dear, We Live In An Age Of Transition."

Faith Begins As An Experiment, And Ends As An Experience.

We Tolerate Shapes In Human Beings That Would Horrify Us If We Saw Them In A Horse.

Let None Of Us Delude Himself By Supposing That Honesty Is Always The Best Policy. It Is Not.

The Happiest People Seem To Be Those Who Have No Particular Cause For Being Happy Except That They Are So.

Philosophy Means Thinking Things Out For Oneself. Ultimately, There Can Be Only One True Philosophy, Since Reason Is One And We All Live In The Same World.

To Marry Is To Get A Binocular View Of Life.

A Man May Build Himself A Throne Of Bayonets, But He Cannot Sit On It.

The Whole Of Creation, With All Of Its Laws, Is A Revelation Of God.

My Dear, We Live In An Age Of Transition.

Boredom Is A Certain Sign That We Are Allowing Our Faculties To Rust In Idleness.

A Monarch Frequently Represents His Subjects Better That An Elected Assembly; And If He Is A Good Judge Of Character He Is Likely To Have More Capable And Loyal Advisers.

Over-population Is A Phenomenon Connected With The Survival Of The Unfit, And It Is A Mechanism Which Has Created Conditions Favourable To The Survival Of The Unfit And The Elimination Of The Fit.

It Is Useless For The Sheep To Pass Resolutions In Favor Of Vegetarianism, While The Wolf Remains Of A Different Opinion.

The Greatest Obstacle To Progress Is Not Man's Inherited Pugnacity, But His Incorrigible Tendency To Parasitism.

The Object Of Studying Philosophy Is To Know One's Own Mind, Not Other Peoples.

Theater Is, Of Course, A Reflection Of Life. Maybe We Have To Improve Life Before We Can Hope To Improve Theater.

Hatred Toward Any Human Being Cannot Exist In The Same Heart As Love To God.

"this Is Old, Therefore It Is Good"; The Other Says, "this Is New, Therefore It Is Better."

They Who Will Live For Others Shall Have Great Troubles, But They Shall Seem To Them Small. Those Who Will Live For Themselves Shall Have Small Troubles, But They Shall Seem To Them Great.

Live For Others

Don't Get Up From The Feast Of Life Without Paying For Your Share Of It.

Admiration For Ourselves And Our Institutions Is Too Often Measured By Our Contempt And Dislike For Foreigners.

The Great Discovery Of The Nineteenth Century, That We Are Of One Blood With The Lower Animals, Has Created New Ethical Obligations Which Have Not Yet Penetrated The Public Conscience. The Clerical Profession Has Been Lamentably Remiss In Preaching This Obvious Duty.

Man, As We Know Him, Is A Poor Creature; He Is Halfway Between An Ape And A God And He Is Travelling In The Right Direction.

Every Institution Not Only Carries Within It The Seeds Of Its Own Dissolution, But Prepares The Way For Its Most Hated Rival.

Consciousness Is A Phase Of Mental Life Which Arises In Connection With The Formation Of New Habits. When Habit Is Formed, Consciousness Only Interferes To Spoil Our Performance.

Public Opinion, A Vulgar, Impertinent, Anonymous Tyrant Who Deliberately Makes Life Unpleasant For Anyone Who Is Not Content To The Average Person.

It Is Becoming Impossible For Those Who Mix At All With Their Fellow-men To Believe That The Grace Of God Is Distributed Denominationally.

I Have No Fear That The Candle Lighted In Palestine Years Ago Will Ever Be Put Out.

But The Instinct Of Hoarding, Like All Other Instincts, Tends To Become Hypertrophied And Perverted; And With The Institution Of Private Property Comes Another Institution-that Of Plunder And Brigandage. In Private Life, No Motive Of Action Is At Present So Powerful And So Persistent As Acquisitiveness, Which Unlike Most Other Desires, Knows No Satiety. The Average Man Is Rich Enough When He Has A Little More Than He Has Got, And Not Till Then.

Man Will Never Be Entirely Willing To Give Up This World For The Next Nor The Next World For This.

Lutheranism Is Essentially German... It Worships A God Who Is Neither Just Nor Merciful.

Action Is The Normal Completion Of The Act Of Will Which Begins As Prayer. That Action Is Not Always External, But It Is Always Some Kind Of Effective Energy.

The Command, 'be Fruitful And Multiply', Was Promulgated, According To Our Authorities, When The Population Of The World Consisted Of Two Persons.

The Devil Deserves Zero Tolerance.

The Strongest Wish Of A Vast Number Of Earnest Men And Women To-day Is For A Basis Of Religious Belief Which Shall Rest, Not Upon Tradition Or External Authority Or Historical Evidence, But Upon The Ascertainable Facts Of Human Experience. The Craving For Immediacy, Which We Have Seen To Be Characteristic Of All Mysticism, Now Takes The Form Of A Desire To Establish The Validity Of The God-consciousness As A Normal Part Of The Healthy Inner Life.

Each Generation Takes A Special Pleasure In Removing The Household Gods Of Its Parents From Their Pedestals, And Consigning Them To The Cupboard.

Deliberate Cruelty To Our Defenceless And Beautiful Little Cousins Is Surely One Of The Meanest And Most Detestable Vices Of Which A Human Being Can Be Guilty.

The Statistics Of Suicide Show That, For Non-combatants At Least, Life Is More Interesting In War Than In Peace.

There Is No Law Of Progress. Our Future Is In Our Own Hands, To Make Or To Mar. It Will Be An Uphill Fight To The End, And Would We Have It Otherwise? Let No One Suppose That Evolution Will Ever Exempt Us From Struggles. 'you Forget,' Said The Devil, With A Chuckle, 'that I Have Been Evolving Too.

All Faith Consists Essentially In The Recognition Of A World Of Spiritual Values Behind, Yet Not Apart From, The World Of Natural Phenomena.

A Nation Is A Society United By A Delusion About Its Ancestry And By Common Hatred Of Its Neighbours.

Events In The Past May Be Roughly Divided Into Those Which Probably Never Happened And Those Which Do Not Matter.

God Does Not Always Punish A Nation By Sending It Adversity. More Often He Gives The Oppressors Their Hearts' Desire, And Sends Leanness Withal Into Their Soul.

Bereavement Is The Deepest Initiation Into The Mysteries Of Human Life, An Initiation More Searching And Profound Than Even Happy Love.

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Christianity Promises To Make Men Free; It Never Promises To Make Them Independent.

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The Wisdom Of The Wise Is An Uncommon Degree Of Common Sense.

Prayer Gives A Man The Opportunity Of Getting To Know A Gentleman He Hardly Ever Meets. I Do Not Mean His Maker, But Himself.

Even The Paradise Of Fools Is Not An Unpleasant Abode While It Is Inhabitable.

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No Christian Can Be A Pessimist, For Christianity Is A System Of Radical Optimism.

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Experience Is A Good Teacher, But Her Fees Are Very High.

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No Healthy Civilization Can Ever Be Reared On A Foundation Of Devitalized Work.

Religion Is Caught, Not Taught.

Gambling Is A Disease Of Barbarians Superficially Civilized.

A Man Is Never So Truly And Intensely Himself As When He Is Most Possessed By God. It Is Impossible To Say Where, In The Spiritual Life, The Human Will Leaves Off And Divine Grace Begins.

Literature Flourishes Best When It Is Half A Trade And Half An Art.

In Imperialism Nothing Fails Like Success. If The Conqueror Oppresses His Subjects, They Will Become Fanatical Patriots, And Sooner Or Later Have Their Revenge; If He Treats Them Well, And Governs Them For Their Good, They Will Multiply Faster Than Their Rulers, Till They Claim Their Independence.

All Human Love Is A Holy Thing, The Holiest Thing In Our Experience.

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The Aim Of Education Is The Knowledge, Not Of Facts, But Of Values.

Originality, I Fear, Is Too Often Only Undetected And Frequently Unconscious Plagiarism.

The Wise Man Is He Who Knows The Relative Value Of Things.

The Jealous Man Is So Preoccupied With What He Hasn't Got That He Fails To Appreciate The Value Of What He Has Got. He Loses The Ability To Feel Glad Because The Sun Is Shining. He Doesn't See The Wonder And The Newness Of The Beginning Of Spring.

Originality Is Undetected Plagiarism.

The Whole Of Nature, As Has Been Said, Is A Conjugation Of The Verb To Eat, In The Active And In The Passive.

Joy Is The Triumph Of Life; It Is The Sign That We Are Living Our True Life As Spiritual Beings.

The Fruit Of The Tree Of Knowledge Always Drives Man From Some Paradise Or Other; And Even The Paradise Of Fools Is Not An Unpleasant Abode While It Is Habitable.

True Faith Is Belief In The Reality Of Absolute Values.

Worry Is Interest Paid On Trouble Before It Comes Due.

The Proper Time To Influence The Character Of A Child Is About A Hundred Years Before He Is Born.

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Patriotism Varies, From A Noble Devotion To A Moral Lunacy.

Experience Proves That None Is So Cruel As The Disillusioned Sentimentalist.

Civilization Is A Disease Which Is Almost Invariably Fatal.

To Become A Popular Religion, It Is Only Necessary For A Superstition To Enslave A Philosophy.

The Church That Is Married To The Spirit Of This Age, Becomes A Widow In The Next.

The Game Of Life Is Worth Playing, But The Struggle Is The Prize.

The Wealth Of A Soul Is Measured By How Much It Can Feel; Its Poverty By How Little.

Let Us Remember, When We Are Inclined To Be Disheartened, That The Private Soldier Is A Poor Judge Of The Fortunes Of A Great Battle.

Nobody Is Bored When He Is Trying To Make Something That Is Beautiful Or To Discover Something That Is True.

What Is Originality? Undetected Plagiarism.

It Is Astonishing With How Little Wisdom Mankind Can Be Governed, When That Little Wisdom Is Its Own.

Nature Takes Away Any Faculty That Is Not Used.

There Are No Rewards Or Punishments - Only Consequences.

The Happy People Are Those Who Are Producing Something; The Bored People Are Those Who Are Consuming Much And Producing Nothing.

A Good Government Remains The Greatest Of Human Blessings And No Nation Has Ever Enjoyed It.

I Think Middle-age Is The Best Time, If We Can Escape The Fatty Degeneration Of The Conscience Which Often Sets In At About Fifty.

A Cat Can Be Trusted To Purr When She Is Pleased, Which Is More Than Can Be Said For Human Beings.

Faith Is An Act Of Rational Choice, Which Determines Us To Act As If Certain Things Were True, And In The Confident Expectation That They Will Prove To Be True.

Take Away Fear, And The Battle Of Freedom Is Half Won.

Faith Always Contains An Element Of Risk, Of Venture; And We Are Impelled To Make The Venture By The Affinity And Attraction Which We Feel In Ourselves.

In Dealing With Englishmen You Can Be Sure Of One Thing Only, That The Logical Solution Will Not Be Adopted.

Bereavement Is The Sharpest Challenge To Our Trust In God; If Faith Can Overcome This, There Is No Mountain Which It Cannot Remove.

The Happy People Are Those Who Are Producing Something.

The Enemies Of Freedom Do Not Argue; They Shout And They Shoot.

Love Remembered And Consecrated By Grief Belongs, More Clearly Than The Happy Intercourse Of Friends, To The Eternal World; It Has Proved Itself Stronger Than Death.

Whoever Marries The Spirit Of This Age Will Find Himself A Widower In The Next.

The Effect Of Boredom On A Large Scale In History Is Underestimated. It Is A Main Cause Of Revolutions, And Would Soon Bring To An End All The Static Utopias And The Farmyard Civilization Of The Fabians.

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