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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.

-George Santayana

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The Profoundest Affinities Are

George Santayana

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

Facts Are All Accidents. They All Might Have Been Different. They All May Become Different. They All May Collapse Altogether.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

A Simple Life Is Its Own Reward.

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.

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

If All Art Aspires To The Condition Of Music, All The Sciences Aspire To The Condition Of Mathematics.

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.

The Constant Demands Of The Heart And The Belly Can Allow Man Only An Incidental Indulgence In The Pleasures Of The Eye And The Understanding.

Old Age Is As Forgetful As Youth, And More Incorrigible; It Displays The Same Inattentiveness To Conditions; Its Memory Becomes Self-repeating And Degenerates Into An Instinctive Reaction, Like A Bird's Chirp.

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart.

The Loftiest Edifices Need The Deepest Foundations.

Columbus Gave The World Another World.

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

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

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.

The Highest Form Of Vanity Is Love Of Fame.

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.

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

A Country Without A Memory Is A Country Of Madmen.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Hunger For Facile Wisdom Is The Root Of All False Philosophy.

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

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

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.

Memory... Is An Internal Rumor.

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

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.

Heaven Is To Be At Peace With Things.

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.

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

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

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

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

Real Unselfishness Consists In Sharing The Interests Of Others.

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.

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

One Real World Is Enough.

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.

Oxford, The Paradise Of Dead Philosophies.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

My Atheism, Like That Of Spinoza, Is True Piety Towards The Universe And Denies Only Gods Fashioned By Men In Their Own Image, To Be Servants Of Their Human Interests.

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.

The Best Men In All Ages Keep Classic Traditions Alive

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

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

Religion Should Be Disentangled As Much As Possible From History And Authority And Metaphysics, And Made To Rest Honestly On One's Fine Feelings, On One's Indomitable Optimism And Trust In Life.

Chaos Is Perhaps At The Bottom Of Everything.

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

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.

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.

Philosophy Is A More Intense Sort Of Experience Than Common Life Is, Just As Pure And Subtle Music, Heard In Retirement, Is Something Keener And More Intense Than The Howling Of Storms Or The Rumble Of Cities.

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

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.

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

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.

All The Doctrines That Have Flourished In The World About Immortality Have Hardly Affected Man's Natural Sentiment In The Face Of Death.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

It Is A Great Bond To Dislike The Same Things.

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

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

When A Man's Life Is Over, It Remains True That He Was One Sort Of Man And Not Another. A Man Who Understands Himself Under The Form Of Eternity Knows The Quality That Eternally Belongs To Him, And Knows That He Cannot Wholly Die, Even If He Would, For When The Movement Of His Life Is Over, The Truth Of His Life Remains.

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

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!

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

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

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

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

Depression Is Rage Spread Thin.

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.

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.

It Is War That Wastes A Nations Wealth, Chokes Its Industries, Kills Its Flower, Narrows Its Sympathies, Condemns It To Be Governed By Adventurers, And Leaves The Puny, Deformed, And Unmanly To Breed The Next Generation.

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

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 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.

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

There Is No Dunce Like A Mature Dunce.

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

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

Perhaps The Universe Is Nothing But An Equilibrium Of Idiocies.

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

Man Alone Knows That He Must Die; But That Very Knowledge Raises Him, In A Sense, Above Mortality, By Making Him A Sharer In The Vision Of Eternal Truth. He Becomes The Spectator Of His Own Tragedy; He Sympathizes So Much With The Fury Of The Storm That He Has No Ears Left For The Shipwrecked Sailor, Though The Sailor Were His Own Soul. The Truth Is Cruel, But It Can Be Loved, And It Makes Free Those Who Have Loved It.

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

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

There Is Nothing Sweeter Than To Be Sympathized With.

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

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

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

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

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

Spirit Itself Is Not Human; It May Spring Up In Any Life... It May Exist In All Animals, And Who Know In How Many Undreamt-of Beings, Or In The Midst Of What Worlds?

To Be Brief Is Almost A Condition Of Being Inspired.

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.

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

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.

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.

Fear First Created The Gods.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

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

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

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.

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.

There Is Nothing To Which Men, While They Have Food And Drink, Cannot Reconcile Themselves.

Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Man Is A Fighting Animal; His Thoughts Are His Banners, And It Is A Failure Of Nerve In Him If They Are Only Thoughts.

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

The Family Is One Of Nature's Masterpieces.

Sanity Is Madness Put To Good Use.

Memory Itself Is An Internal Rumour.

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.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

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.

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

Docility Is The Observable Half Of Reason.

All Spiritual Interests Are Supported By Animal Life.

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

Men Have Feverishly Conceived A Heaven Only To Find It Insipid, And A Hell To Find It Ridiculous.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In The Gospels, For Instance, We Sometimes Find The Kingdom Of Heaven Illustrated By Principles Drawn From Observation Of This World Rather Than From An Ideal Conception Of Justice; ... They Remind Us That The God We Are Seeking Is Present And Active, That He Is The Living God; They Are Doubtless Necessary If We Are To Keep Religion From Passing Into A Mere Idealism And God Into The Vanishing Point Of Our Thought And Endeavour.

Never Have I Enjoyed Youth So Thoroughly As I Have In My Old Age

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

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

Our Dignity Is Not In What We Do, But What We Understand.

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

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

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 Love Of Life In The Consciousness Of Impotence.

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.

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A Way Foolishness Has Of Revenging Itself Is To Excommunicate The World.

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