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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.

-George Santayana

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The Whole Machinery Of

George Santayana

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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.

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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.

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.

Religions Are The Great Fairy Tales Of Conscience.

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.

A Country Without A Memory Is A Country Of Madmen.

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Know What People Really Think, Pay Regard To What They Do, Rather Than What They Say.

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.

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

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

Bid, Then, The Tender Light Of Faith To Shine By Which Alone The Mortal Heart Is Led Unto The Thinking Of The Thought Divine.

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

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.

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.

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

Old Places And Old Persons In Their Turn, When Spirit Dwells In Them, Have An Intrinsic Vitality Of Which Youth Is Incapable, Precisely, The Balance And Wisdom That Come From Long Perspectives And Broad Foundations

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

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

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

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

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.

The God To Whom Depth In Philosophy Bring Back Men's Minds Is Far From Being The Same From Whom A Little Philosophy Estranges Them

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

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

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

The Family Is One Of Nature's Masterpieces.

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

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 Body Is An Instrument, The Mind Its Function, The Witness And Reward Of Its Operation.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

What Renders Man An Imaginative And Moral Being Is That In Society He Gives New Aims To His Life Which Could Not Have Existed In Solitude : The Aims Of Friendship , Religion , Science , And Art .

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

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

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

Docility Is The Observable Half Of Reason.

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

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

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.

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

Since Barbarism Has Its Pleasures It Naturally Has Its Apologists.

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.

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

Writing History

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

The Quality Of Wit Inspires More Admiration Than Confidence

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

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.

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

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

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

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

There Is No Dunce Like A Mature Dunce.

Memory... Is An Internal Rumor.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Parents Lend Children Their Experience And A Vicarious Memory; Children Endow Their Parents With A Vicarious Immortality.

Intelligence Is Quickness In Seeing Things As They Are.

An Ideal Cannot Wait For Its Realization To Prove Its Validity.

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.

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.

We Should Have To Abandon Our Vested Illusions, Our Irrational Religions And Patriotisms.

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

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

To Delight In War Is A Merit In The Soldier, A Dangerous Quality In The Captain, And A Positive Crime In The Statesman.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

We Crave Support In Vanity, As We Do In Religion, And Never Forgive Contradictions In That Sphere.

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.

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

A Child Educated Only At School Is An Uneducated Child.

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

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

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.

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

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

My Soul Hates The Fool Whose Only Passion Is To Live By Rule.

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.

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.

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.

People Who Feel Themselves To Be Exiles In This World Are Mightily Inclined To Believe Themselves Citizens Of Another.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Ideal Society Is A Drama Enacted Exclusively In The Imagination.

Unmitigated Seriousness Is Always Out Of Place In Human Affairs.

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

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.

Happiness Is Impossible, And Even Inconceivable, To A Mind Without Scope And Without Pause, A Mind Driven By Craving, Pleasure, Or Fear. To Be Happy, You Must Be Reasonable, Or You Must Be Tamed. You Must Have Taken The Measure Of Your Powers, Tasted The Fruits Of Your Passion, And Learned Your Place In The World And What Things In It Can Really Serve You. To Be Happy, You Must Be Wise.

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.

It Is A New Road To Happiness, If You Have Strength Enough To Castigate A Little The Various Impulses That Sway You In Turn.

The Habit Of Looking For Beauty In Everything Makes Us Notice The Shortcomings Of Things, Our Sense, Hungry For Complete Satisfaction, Misses The Perfection It Demands.

Manhood And Sagacity Ripen Of Themselves; It Suffices Not To Repress Or Distort Them.

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.

Beauty Is Objectified Pleasure.

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

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

To Turn Events Into Ideas Is The Function Of Literature.

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?

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

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.

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

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 Loftiest Edifices Need The Deepest Foundations.

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.

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

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

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

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

Familiarity Breeds Contempt Only When It Breeds Inattention.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

... 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Fear First Created The Gods.

The Best Men In All Ages Keep Classic Traditions Alive

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.

Skepticism, Like Chastity, Should Not Be Relinquished Too Readily.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is Wisdom In Turning As Often As Possible From The Familiar To The Unfamiliar: It Keeps The Mind Nimble, It Kills Prejudice, And It Fosters Humor.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Little Word Is Has Its Tragedies: It Marries And Identifies Different Things With The Greatest Innocence; And Yet No Two Are Ever Identical, And If Therein Lies The Charm Of Wedding Them And Calling Them One, Therein Too Lies The Danger.

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.

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

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

Artists Have No Less Talents Than Ever, Their Taste, Their Vision, Their Sentiment Are Often Interesting; They Are Mighty In Their Independence And Feeble Only In Their Works.

. . . 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.

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

The Truth Properly Means The Sum Of All True Propositions, What Omniscience Would Assert, The Whole Ideal System Of Qualities Andrelations Which The World Has Exemplified Or Will Exemplify. The Truth Is All Things Seen Under The Form Of Eternity.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Love Moving Water, I Love Ships, I Love The Sharp Definition, The Concentrated Humanity, The Sublime Solitude Of Life At Sea. The Dangers Of It Only Make Present To Us The Peril Inherent In All Existence, Which The Stupid, Ignorant, Un-travelled Land-worm Never Discovers; And The Art Of It, So Mathematical, So Exact, So Rewarding To Intelligence, Appeals To Courage And Clears The Mind Of Superstition, While Filling It With Humility And True Religion.

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.

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

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

Skepticism Is The Chastity Of The Intellect, And It Is Shameful To Surrender It Too Soon Or To The First Comer; There Is Nobility In Preserving It Coolly And Proudly Through Long Youth, Until At Last, In The Ripeness Of Instinct And Discretion, It Can Be Safely Exchanged For Fidelity And Happiness.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Art Is A Delayed Echo.

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.

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.

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

Depression Is Rage Spread Thin.

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

To Be Bewitched Is Not To Be Saved, Though All The Magicians And Aesthetes In The World Should Pronounce It To Be So.

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

Sex Endows The Individual With A Dumb And Powerful Instinct, Which Carries His Body And Soul Continually Towards Another, Makes It One Of The Dearest Employments Of His Life To Select And Pursue A Companion, And Joins To Possession The Keenest Pleasure, To Rivalry The Fiercest Rage, And To Solicitude An Eternal Melancholy. What More Could Be Needed To Suffuse The World With The Deepest Meaning And Beauty?

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

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.

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

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

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