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

-George Santayana

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Words Are Weapons, And

George Santayana

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

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

It Is Wisdom To Believe The Heart.

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.

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

Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Facts.

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

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

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 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.

It Is A Great Bond To Dislike The Same Things.

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

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

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

Words Of Wisdom

Disillusionment

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

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.

. . . 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In This World We Must Either Institute Conventional Forms Of Expression Or Else Pretend That We Have Nothing To Express; The Choice Lies Between A Mask And A Figleaf.

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

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

The Best Men In All Ages Keep Classic Traditions Alive

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

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

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

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.

Nothing Can Be Lower Or More Wholly Instrumental Than The Substance And Cause Of All Things.

...science Is Nothing But Developed Perception, Interpreted Intent, Common-sense Rounded Out And Minutely Articulated. It Is Therefore As Much An Instinctive Product, As Much A Stepping Forth Of Human Courage In The Dark, As Is Any Inevitable Dream Or Impulsive Action.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Oxford, The Paradise Of Dead Philosophies.

Sanctity And Genius Are As Rebellious As Vice.

Boston Was A Moral And Intellectual Nursery, Always Busy Applying First Principles To Trifles.

Wisdom Comes From Disillusionment.

Disillusionment

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Philosophers Are Very Severe Towards Other Philosophers Because They Expect Too Much.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Idea Of Christ Is Much Older Than Christianity.

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

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

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

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

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

... 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Soul Is The Voice Of The Body's Interests.

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

There Is No Greater Stupidity Or Meanness Than To Take Uniformity For An Ideal.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Everything In Nature Is Lyrical In Its Ideal Essence, Tragic In Its Fate, And Comic In Its Existence.

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

Art Supplies Constantly To Contemplation What Nature Seldom Affords In Concrete Experience - The Union Of Life And Peace.

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

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

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

Well-bred Instinct Meets Reason Halfway

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

... 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.

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

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.

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

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

Beauty Is Objectified Pleasure.

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.

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

Christianity Persecuted, Tortured, And Burned. Like A Hound It Tracked The Very Scent Of Heresy. It Kindled Wars, And Nursed Furious Hatreds And Ambitions... Man, Far From Being Freed From His Natural Passions, Was Plunged Into Artificial Ones Quite As Violent And Much More Disappointing.

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.

Guard You Thoughts As You Would Your Wallet. Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Knowledge Of What Is Possible Is The Beginning Of Happiness.

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

Familiarity Breeds Contempt Only When It Breeds Inattention.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

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

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

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

Rejection Is A Form Of Self-assertion. You Have Only To Look Back Upon Yourself As A Person Who Hates This Or That To Discover What It Is That You Secretly Love.

The Bible Is Literature, Not Dogma.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beautiful Things, When Taste Is Formed, Are Obviously And Unaccountably Beautiful.

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

Fashion Is Something Barbarous, For It Produces Innovation Without Reason And Imitation Without Benefit.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

American Life Is A Powerful Solvent. It Seems To Neutralize Every Intellectual Element, However Tough And Alien It May Be, And To Fuse It In The Native Good Will, Complacency, Thoughtlessness, And Optimism.

An Artist Is A Dreamer Consenting To Dream Of The Actual World.

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.

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

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

Ideal Society Is A Drama Enacted Exclusively In The Imagination.

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

There Is No Right Government Except Good Government.

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

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

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

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

Beware Of Long Arguments And Long Beards.

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

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

In A Moving World Readaptation Is The Price Of Longevity.

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.

Self-assurance Is Contemptible And Fatal Unless It Is Self-knowledge.

Columbus Gave The World Another World.

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.

Nothing Is So Irrevocable As Mind.

Religion In Its Humility Restores Man To His Only Dignity, The Courage To Live By Grace.

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.

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.

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

Since Barbarism Has Its Pleasures It Naturally Has Its Apologists.

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

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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