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. . . 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.

-George Santayana

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. . . Until

George Santayana

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. . . 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.

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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?

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.

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 .

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.

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

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

Nature Is Like A Beautiful Woman That May Be As Delightfully And As Truly Known At A Certain Distance As Upon A Closer View; As To Knowing Her Through And Through; That Is Nonsense In Both Cases, And Might Not Reward Our Pains.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Boosted By An Illusion Is Not To Live Better Than To Live In Harmony With The Truth ... These Refusals To Part With A Decayed Illusion Are Really An Infection To The Mind.

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.

For An Idea Ever To Be Fashionable Is Ominous, Since It Must Afterwards Be Always Old Fashioned

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.

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

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

Since Barbarism Has Its Pleasures It Naturally Has Its Apologists.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Art Is A Delayed Echo.

All Language Is Rhetorical, And Even The Senses Are Poets.

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

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

Nature Drives With A Loose Rein And Vitality Of Any Sort Can Blunder Through Many A Predicament In Which Reason Would Despair.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A Friend's Only Gift Is Himself.

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.

That Life Is Worth Living Is The Most Necessary Of Assumptions, And Were It Not Assumed, The Most Impossible Of Conclusions.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Plasticity Loves New Moulds Because It Can Fill Them, But For A Man Of Sluggish Mind And Bad Manners There Is Decidedly No Place Like Home.

The Quality Of Wit Inspires More Admiration Than Confidence

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

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

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.

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.

All His Life He [the American] Jumps Into The Train After It Has Started And Jumps Out Before It Has Stopped; And He Never Once Gets Left Behind, Or Breaks A Leg.

There Is Nothing Sweeter Than To Be Sympathized With.

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.

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

Real Unselfishness Consists In Sharing The Interests Of Others.

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

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.

The Highest Form Of Vanity Is Love Of Fame.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

O World, Thou Choosest Not The Better Part! It Is Not Wisdom To Be Only Wise, And On The Inward Vision Close The Eyes, But It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart. Columbus Found A World, And Had No Chart, Save One That Faith Deciphered In The Skies; To Trust The Soul's Invincible Surmise Was All His Science And His Only Art.

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

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?

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.

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

Oaths Are The Fossils Of Piety.

If Pain Could Have Cured Us We Should Long Ago Have Been Saved.

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

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

There Must ... Be In Our Very Nature A Very Radical And Widespread Tendency To Observe Beauty, And To Value It. No Account Of The Principles Of The Mind Can Be At All Adequate That Passes Over So Conspicuous A Faculty.

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

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

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

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

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

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

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.

Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Facts.

What Is False In The Science Of Facts May Be True In The Science Of Values.

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

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.

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.

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

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

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.

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?

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.

A Child Educated Only At School Is An Uneducated Child.

For Shakespeare, In The Matter Of Religion, The Choice Lay Between Christianity And Nothing. He Chose Nothing.

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.

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

The Loftiest Edifices Need The Deepest Foundations.

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.

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

Fear First Created The Gods.

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

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

The Universe, As Far As We Can Observe It, Is A Wonderful And Immense Engine.... If We Dramatize Its Life And Conceive Its Spirit, We Are Filled With Wonder, Terror And Amusement, So Magnificent Is The Spirit.

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

The 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.

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

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.

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

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

Columbus Gave The World Another World.

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

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

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

Repetition Is The Only Form Of Permanence That Nature Can Achieve.

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.

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

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

Oxford, The Paradise Of Dead Philosophies.

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

The Only Kind Of Reform Usually Possible Is Reform From Within; A More Intimate Study And More Intelligent Use Of The Traditional Forms.

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

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.

Never Build Your Emotional Life On The Weaknesses Of Others.

The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen.

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

You And I Possess Manifold Ideal Bonds In The Interests We Share; But Each Of Us Has His Poor Body And His Irremediable, Incommunicable Dreams.

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.

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

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

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

... 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.

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

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

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

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.

Prayer, Among Sane People, Has Never Superseded Practical Efforts To Secure The Desired End.

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

Wisdom Comes From Disillusionment.

Disillusionment

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

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

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

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.

Matters Of Religion Should Never Be Matters Of Controversy. We Neither Argue With A Lover About His Taste, Nor Condemn Him, If We Are Just, For Knowing So Human A Passion.

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

America Is A Young Country With An Old Mentality.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Our Occasional Madness Is Less Wonderful Than Our Occasional Sanity.

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.

Life Is Judged With All The Blindness Of Life Itself.

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

The Traveller Must Be Somebody And Come From Somewhere, So That His Definite Character And Moral Traditions May Supply An Organ And A Point Of Comparison For His Observations.

There 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 Best Men In All Ages Keep Classic Traditions Alive

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

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

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

Making Sacrifices

Sacrifice For Others

Nietzsche Said That The Earth Has Been A Madhouse Long Enough. Without Contradicting Him We Might Perhaps Soften The Expression, And Say That Philosophy Has Been Long Enough An Asylum For Enthusiasts.

A Country Without A Memory Is A Country Of Madmen.

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

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

When Men And Women Agree, It Is Only In Their Conclusions; Their Reasons Are Always Different.

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.

Memory Itself Is An Internal Rumour.

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

Spirituality Lies In Regarding Existence Merely As A Vehicle For Contemplation, And Contemplation Merely A Vehicle For Joy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Bible Is Literature, Not Dogma.

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

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

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

Saints And Sinners

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.

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

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.

You Cannot Prove Realism To A Complete Sceptic Or Idealist; But You Can Show An Honest Man That He Is Not A Complete Sceptic Or Idealist, But A Realist At Heart. So Long As He Is Alive His Sincere Philosophy Must Fulfil The Assumptions Of His Life And Not Destroy Him.

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

Well-bred Instinct Meets Reason Halfway

The Young Man Who Has Not Wept Is A Savage, And The Older Man Who Will Not Laugh Is A Fool.

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.

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

Heaven Is To Be At Peace With Things.

All Beauties Are To Be Honored, But Only One Embraced.

Experience Has Repeatedly Confirmed That Well-known Maxim Of Bacon's That 'a Little Philosophy Inclineth A Man's Mind To Atheism, But Depth In Philosophy Bringeth Men's Minds About To Religion.' At The Same Time, When Bacon Penned That Sage Epigram... He Forgot To Add That The God To Whom Depth In Philosophy Brings Back Men's Minds Is Far From Being The Same From Whom A Little Philosophy Estranges Them.

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.

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

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