The Faber Book of Aphorisms
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"The Faber Book of Aphorisms" is a book by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger.
Full text[1]
THE
FABER BOOK OF
APHORISMS
A Personal Selection
BY
W. H. AUDEN
AND
FABER AND FABER LIMITED
24 Russell Square, London
First published in USA by The Viking Press Inc
First published in England in mcmlxiv
by Faber and Faber Limited
24 Russell Square, London WC1
Second Impression mcmlxv
Printed in Great Britain
by Latimer Trend and Company Limited, Whitstable All rights reserved
© 1962 by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The compilers and publishers would like to express their
thanks for the co-operation of the owners and controllers
of copyright listed below. If there are others whose names
should have appeared, but whom the publishers have been
unable to identify or trace, they would be grateful if the
copyright owners would write to them so that the list in
the next edition may be appropriately extended.
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Bertrand Russell, Tobias Dantzig, Oswald Spengler; Beacon Press: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; Jonathan Cape, Ltd. Jane Jacobs; Chatto & Windus, Ltd.: Marcel Proust; Clarendon Press: Logan Pearsall Smith; T. & T. Clark: Martin Buber; Miss D. E. Collins, A. P. Watt & Son, Methuen & Co, Ltd., Cassell & Co., Ltd., Sheed & Ward, Ltd., Bodley Head, Ltd.: G. K. Chesterton; Constable & Co., Ltd.: Sir William Osier, George Santayana, Logan Pearsall Smith; Editions Gallimard: Paul Valdry; The Hon. Robert Gathorne Hardy: Logan Pearsall Smith; Harper & Row: Eric Hoffer; Houghton Mifflin Co.: John Jay Chapman; James Nisbet & Co., Ltd.: Logan Pearsall Smith; Oxford University Press: Logan Pearsall Smith, A. N. Whitehead, Charles Williams; Peter Owen, Ltd.: Cesare Pavese; Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd.: Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Paul Val6ry; Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd.: Franz Kafka; Society of Authors and the Public Trustee: George Bernard Shaw; St. Martin’s Press, Inc.: Stanislaw Lee; Thames & Hudson, Ltd.: Martin Buber.
Cv]
Foreword
This anthology is devoted to aphoristic writing, not to epi-
grams. An epigram need only be true of a single case, for ex-
ample, Coolidge opened his mouth and a moth flew out; or
effective only in a particular polemical context, for example.
Foxhunting is the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeak-
able ; which is an admirable remark when made in a country
house in the Shires, but a cheap one if addressed to a society
of intellectuals who have never known the pleasures of hunt-
ing. An aphorism, on the other hand, must convince every
reader that it is either universally true or true of every mem-
ber of the class to which it refers, irrespective of the reader's
convictions. To a Christian, for example, The knowledge of
God is very far from the love of Him is a true statement about
a defect in the relation between himself and God; to the un-
believer, it is a true statement about the psychology of reli-
gious belief. An aphorism can be polemic in form but not in
meaning. Do not do unto others as you would they should
do unto you — their tastes may not be the same — is not a
denial of the Gospel injunction but an explanation of what
it really means. The road of excess leads to the palace of wis-
dom is a borderline case. It is a valid aphorism if one can
safely assume that every reader knows the importance of self-
control; one cannot help feeling that, were Blake our con-
temporary, he would have written sometimes leads .
Again, an epigram must be amusing and brief, but an aphorism, though it should not be boring and must be suc- cinct in style, need not make the reader laugh and can extend itself to several sentences.
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and im-
[vii]
Foreword
plicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser or more
intelligent than his readers. For this reason the aphorist who
adopts a folksy style with “democratic” diction and grammar
is a cowardly and insufferable hypocrite.
No anthologist of aphorisms can be impartial, nor should he try to be. Two statements may be equally true, but, in any society at any given point in history, one of them is probably more important than the other; and, human nature being what it is, the most important truths are likely to be those which that society at that time least wants to hear. In mak- ing his selection, it is up to the anthologist to guess what bubbles, intellectual, moral, and political, are at the moment most in need of pricking.
Ignorance has imposed on us a further limitation, which we hope will not be mistaken for arrogance. We have limited our choice to writers belonging to what, for lack of a better term, is called Western civilization, not because we consider that civilization superior to any other, but because it would be folly and presumption on our part to claim that our knowl- edge of, say, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or Islamic literature could possibly give an adequate representation of their aphor- isms. At a time, however, when it seems as if it were pre- cisely the worst aspects of our technological culture — our noise, our vulgarity, our insane waste of natural resources — which are the most exportable (European intellectuals who imagine these vices to be of American origin are willfully deceiving themselves), we are bold to think of this volume as evidence that there are others — such as humor and a capacity for self-criticism — which, though less intrusive than jukeboxes and bombs, are neither negligible nor unworthy of respect.
W. H. A.
L. K.
[ viii ]
Contents
HUMANITY i
The Human Creature 3
Human Suffering 16
Self-Knowledge 21
Sleep and Dreams 24
The Human Mind 26
Memory and Conscience 32
Self-Love 36
Human Vices 41
Human Virtues 49
Success and Failure 51
Habit 61
Humor 62
Human Types 63
The Talker 66
Human Folly 68
RELIGION AND GOD 71
NATURE 95
EDUCATION 107
SOCIETY 117
The Drawing Room 119
The Market Place 134
The Arena 157
[ix]
Contents
THE SEXES
165
LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND FRIENDSHIP
177
THE PROFESSIONS
205
HISTORY
225
ACTION
--i 1
SCIENCE
2 57
THE ARTS
265
Theory and Practice
267
Writers and Readers
2 75
Sights and Sounds
289
STATES AND GOVERNMENTS
2 95
Politics and Power
297
Liberty and Union
3°9
People and Princes
3 H
THE LIFE OF THE MIND
3 i 9
Truth and Error
3 21
Opinions and Beliefs
3 2 7
Reason and Thought
339
Language and Ideas
356
Memories and Dreams
360
LIFE’S MINOR PLEASURES AND
TRIALS
3 6 3
AGES OF MAN
381
INDEX OF AUTHORS
397
[X]
CT5^)
The Human Creature
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If it is not true
that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of
the animals went entirely off its head. Chesterton
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. kant
In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly.
But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely
butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar. chekhov
The body is a thing, the soul is also a thing; man is not a
thing, but a drama — his life. Man has to live with the body
and soul which have fallen to him by chance. And the first
thing he has to do is decide what he is going to do.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Bedizened or stark
naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing- master to this world, griffons a dark
“Like does not like like that is obnoxious”; and writes
error with four r's.
MARIANNE MOORE
We're not at one. We've no instinctive knowledge
like migratory birds. Outstripped and late,
[ 5 ]
Humanity
we force ourselves on winds and find no welcome
from ponds where we alight. We comprehend
flowering and fading simultaneously.
And somewhere lions still roam, all unaware while yet their splendor lasts of any weakness.
RILKE
Natural man has only two primal passions: to get and to beget.
OSLER
It is chiefly through the instinct to kill that man achieves intimacy with the life of nature. clark
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant
excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance,
sober him, and you undo him. william james
Shower upon him every blessing, drown him in a sea of
happiness, give him economic prosperity, such that he should
have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy him-
self with the continuation of his species, and even then, out
of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some
nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliber-
ately desire the most fatal rubbish, the utmost economic
absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good
sense his fatal fantastic element. dostoevski
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is
a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
SCHILLER
Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part. hazlitt
f4j
The Human Creature
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give
him a mask and he will tell the truth. wilde
To breed an animal with the right to make promises — is not
this the paradoxical problem nature has set herself with re-
gard to man? nietzsche
I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
DOSTOEVSKI
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been. hazlitt
Man is only man at the surface. Remove his skin, dissect, and
immediately you come to machinery. valley
body: O who shall me deliver whole
From bonds of this Tyrannic Soul?
Which, stretcht upright, impales me so.
That mine own Precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless Frame:
(A Fever could but do the same.)
And, wanting where its spight to try,
Has made me live to let me dye.
A Body that could never rest.
Since this ill Spirit it possest.
MARVELL
No one hates his body. saint augustine
I am the owner of my shoulders, the tenant of my hips.
CHAZAL
[ 5 ]
Humanity
Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes,
I would add, and so are men, but men have this further ad-
vantage that they can also teach their organs in return.
GOETHE
All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that molded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behavior of a species are parts of the same whole. There is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no corresponding inhibition. lorenz
Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signaling
to be let out. connolly
The human face is really like one of those Oriental gods:
a whole group of faces juxtaposed on different planes; it is
impossible to see them all simultaneously. proust
Excluding those faces which are beautiful, good-natured, or
intellectual — and these are few and far between — I believe
that a person of any sensibility hardly ever sees a new face
without a sensation akin to shock at encountering a new
and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
SCHOPENHAUER
When one shuts one eye, one does not hear everything.
SWISS PROVERB
The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he
were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below
him. SCHOPENHAUER
The Human Creature
Eyes are compacted powers; they are an index of vision;
they see and refer us to greater seeing. Nor has the stomach
a less noble office. It digests food; that is, in its own particular
method, it deals with the nourishment offered by the uni-
verse. It is the physical formula of that health which destroys
certain elements — the bacteria which harmfully approach us.
By it we learn to consume; by it therefore to be, in turn,
consumed. So even with those poor despised things, the
buttocks. There is no seated figure, no image of any seated
figure, which does not rely on them for its strength and
balance. They are at the bottom of the sober dignity of judges;
the grace of a throned woman; the hierarchical session of
the Pope himself reposes on them. williams
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
hands and feet Proportion. blake
soul: O who shall, from this Dungeon, raise,
A soul inslav’d so many wayes?
With bolts of Bones, that fetter'd stands In Feet; and manacled in Hands.
Here blinded with an Eye; and there Deaf with the drumming of an Ear.
A Soul hung up, as ’twere, in Chains Of Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain Head, and double Heart.
MARVELL
The soul is the wife of the body. They do not have the same kind of pleasure or, at least, they seldom enjoy it at the same time. val^ry
The body has its end which it does not know; the mind its
means of which it is unaware. valery
[ 7 ]
Humanity
A brain weight of nine hundred grams is adequate as an
optimum for human behavior. Anything more is employed
in the commission of misdeeds. hooton
Man is a sun; and the senses are his planets. novalis
Our body will become voluntary, our soul organic. novalis
The various states of soul in a man must be like the letters
in a dictionary, some of which are powerfully and volumi-
nously developed, others having only a few words under them
— but the soul must have a complete alphabet, kierkegaard
Fine minds are seldom fine souls.
RICHTER
It is usual enough with delicate beings to have a fine intel-
ligence and a poor brain. joubert
People are governed by the head; a kind heart is of little value in chess. chamfort
Certainly there is a consent between the body and the mind;
and where nature erreth in the one, she ventureth in the
other. bacon
The mind, like the body, is subject to be hurt by everything
it taketh for a remedy. Halifax
The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
[81
The Human Creature
The heart is either a grand seigneur or a nobody. chazal
There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the
human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a
merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price
of linseed, the tare on tallow, or the brokerage on hemp? Can
an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for car-
riage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands
in a basin. All is incongruous. bagehot
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury,
starting with being in the world. pavese
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy
instinct is for it. Samuel butler (ii)
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo, not for
a man. samuel butler (ii)
We both exist and know that we exist, and rejoice in this
existence and this knowledge. saint augustine
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
SANTAYANA
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before
we have learned to walk. connolly
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the
instrument as one goes on. samuel butler (ii)
[ 9 ]
Humanity
Simply the thing I am shall make me live. shakespeare
Life is too short to be small.
DISRAELI
Physiological life is of course not “Life.” And neither is
psychological life. Life is the world. Wittgenstein
Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to
us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should
not live. Schopenhauer
If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps
be less exacting. delacroix
Love for life is still possible, only one loves differently: it is
like love for a woman whom one does not trust. nietzsche
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his
private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
I am and know and will; I am knowing and willing; I know
myself to be and to will; I will to be and to know.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
One can say: “I will, but my body does not obey me”; but not: “My will does not obey me.” saint augustine
The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders
the lame man who can see. Schopenhauer
[ 10 ]
The Human Creature
The human being is a blind man who dreams that he can see.
HEBBEL
The iron chain and the silken cord are both equally bonds.
SCHILLER
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. hoffer
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for
example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom
of speech as a compensation. Kierkegaard
We feel free when we escape — even if it be but from the
frying pan into the fire. hoffer
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as
he likes. t. h. huxley
There is no freedom for the weak.
MEREDITH
No man is weak from choice.
VAUVENARGUES
When one has made a mistake, one says: “Next time I shall
really know what to do.” What one should say is: “I already
know what I shall really do next time.” pavese
The faces of men tell us less than they should, because sleep
as well as action traces lines upon them. The faces of the
worst murderers can be paralleled in ugliness by the faces
of the most blameless saints. muir
[ 11 ]
Humanity
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom
nothing is habitual but indecision. william james
We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when
she takes the knave of hearts. lady mary montagu
A man is always as good as the good which appears in his
face, but he need not be as evil as the evil which appears
in it, because evil does not always realize itself immediately;
indeed, sometimes it never realizes itself at all. picard
Our notion of symmetry is derived from the human face.
Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth
only, not vertically nor in depth. pascal
Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not
unhappy at having only one eye? pascal
When two faces which resemble each other are brought
together, they make us laugh because of the resemblance,
though neither by itself would make us laugh. pascal
Chins are exclusively a human feature, not to be found among
the beasts. If they had chins, most animals would look like
each other. Man was given a chin to prevent the personality
of his mouth and eyes from overwhelming the rest of his
face, to prevent each individual from becoming a species unto
himself. chazal
The nose feels the cold, the chin feels the heat. chazal
[ 12 ]
The Human Creature
The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears. Heraclitus
The eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men if they have
barbarous souls. Heraclitus
The ears are the last feature to age.
CHAZAL
One’s eyes are what one is; one’s mouth, what one becomes.
GALSWORTHY
If the eyes are often the organ through which the intelligence shines, the nose is generally the organ which most readily publishes stupidity. proust
Vice shows itself in the eyes; crime in the back of the neck.
KASSNER
The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom. chazal
When indifferent, the eye takes still photographs; when inter-
ested, movies. chazal
The fingers must be educated, the thumb is bom knowing.
chazal
The thumb takes the responsibility, the index finger the initiative. chazal
The little finger looks through a magnifying glass, the index
finger through a lorgnette. chazal
[ 13 ]
Humanity
In the distance, the gestures of animals look human, the
gestures of human beings bestial. chazal
Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why
the animals don't understand us. chazal
There is an essential ambiguity in human gestures, and when
someone raises the palms of his hands together, we do not
know whether it is to bury himself in prayer or to throw
himself into the sea. ortega y gasset
To walk behind anyone along a lane is a thing that, properly
speaking, touches the oldest nerve of awe. Chesterton
Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood.
CHAZAL
The animal has a serious expression, even in play, but laughs with his body. The more a man laughs, the more like an animal he looks. chazal
We sometimes laugh from ear to ear, but it would be impos-
sible for a smile to be wider than the distance between our
eyes. chazal
Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face.
CHAZAL
Three smiles that are worse than griefs: the smile of snow melting, the smile of your wife when another man has been with her, the smile of a mastiff about to spring.
anonymous (tr. from Irish by T. Kinsella)
[HI
The Human Creature
The wink was not our best invention. hodgson
The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.
CHAZAL
Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind. la Rochefoucauld
Ah is the shortest of human cries. Oh the longest. Man is
bom in an Ah and dies in an Oh, for birth is immediate and
death is like an airplane taking off. chazal
The world of silence without speech is the world before
creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silence truth
is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake.
Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence
and gives it meaning and honor. picard
Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what
is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice.
HOFMANNSTHAL
We speak with our lips to explain, with our throats to con- vince. CHAZAL
Grace is to the body what clear thinking is to the mind.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf.
OSLER
A deaf woman would be displeased at your shouting if she were conscious of it. stendhal
[ 15 ]
Humanity
He whose vision is defective always sees less than those with
good eyesight; but he who is hard of hearing always hears
something extra. nietzsche
The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only
as lightning and to the blind only as thunder. Santayana
Men are very queer animals — a mixture of horse-nervousness,
ass-stubbornness and camel-malice. t. h. huxley
In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects con-
tribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than
all the precepts of the philosophers and divines . Halifax
Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good
One. HALIFAX
We care what happens to people only in proportion as we
know what people are. henry james
Human Suffering
The human condition is such that pain and effort are not
just symptoms which can be removed without changing life
itself; they are rather the modes in which life itself, together
[ 16 ]
Human Suffering
with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt.
For mortals, the “easy life of the gods” would be a lifeless
life. HANNAH ARENDT
Woe is wondrously clinging: the clouds ride by.
anonymous ( Anglo-Saxon)
Only one who is in pain really senses nothing but himself; pleasure does not enjoy itself but something beside itself. Pain is the only inner sense found by introspection which can rival in independence from experienced objects the self- evident certainty of logical and arithmetical reasoning.
HANNAH ARENDT
The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive
than for a base one. The people who stood motionless, from
one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg,
would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a
human life. simone weil
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
DR. JOHNSON
The wretched have no compassion. dr. Johnson
People in distress never think that you feel enough.
DR. JOHNSON
Those who do not complain are never pitied. jane austen
Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.
DR. JOHNSON
[ 17 ]
Humanity
The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
MARX
We often tremble at an empty terror; but the false fancy
brings a real misery. schiller
We have to endure the discordance between imagination and
fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This
landscape is ugly.” simone weil
There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure
is not strong enough and they crave pain. Emerson
One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad. e. hubbard
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but
rather what they miss. carlyle
We are not miserable without feeling it. A ruined house is
not miserable. pascal
Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him. richter
A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to
be sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the
day is over. chamfort
The world gets better every day — then worse again in the
evening. kin hubbard
[ 18 ]
Human SuBering
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help
of it one has got through many a bad night. nietzsche
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of
being a man. dr. Johnson
In the small hours when the acrid stench of existence rises
like sewer gas from everything created, the emptiness of life
seems more terrible than its misery. connolly
How like herrings and onions our vices are the morning after
we have committed them, and even lawful pleasures are like
the smell of a dinner room when you have gone out and
entered it after dinner. coleridge
It seems my soul is like a filthy pond, wherein fish die soon,
and frogs live long. thomas fuller
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but
drinking. dr. johnson
When a man has reached a condition in which he believes
that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and
that what he wishes to happen can never be, this is really
the state called desperation . Schopenhauer
Extremely happy and extremely unhappy men are alike prone
to grow hardhearted. Montesquieu
The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
[ 19 ]
CHEKHOV
Humanity
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always
proud of the fact. russell
We are never so happy or so unhappy as we think.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying with- out having laughed at all. la bruyere
I sometimes try to be miserable that I may do more work.
BLAKE
If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
MONTESQUIEU
It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.
JOUBERT
To describe happiness is to diminish it. stendhal
A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied , but not
equally happy . Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agree-
able consciousness. dr. Johnson
Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness
that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
CHEKHOV
The only joy in the world is to begin. pavese
Not to call a thing good a day longer or a day earlier than it
seems good to us is the only way to remain really happy.
NIETZSCHE
[ 20 ]
Self-Knowledge
"Know thyself?” If I knew myself, Fd run away. goethe
It is as hard to see one’s self as to look backwards without
turning round. thoreau
One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self: of all
mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.
NIETZSCHE
We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Be- tween the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill the gap. proust
One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.
WILDE
Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest en- chantment that you have experienced. Hofmannsthal
Every enthusiast contains a false enthusiast, every lover a
false lover, every man of genius a false man of genius, and,
as a rule, every fault its counterfeit: this is necessary in order
to assure the continuity of one’s personality, not only in the
eyes of others but in one’s own — in order to understand
oneself, count upon oneself, think of oneself; in order, in
short, to be oneself. valery
Long years must pass before the truths we have made for
ourselves become our very flesh. val£ry
Humanity
“I remain true to myself.” Exactly. That is your misfortune.
Would that, just once, you could be untrue to yourself.
HEBBEL
It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
EMERSON
We have to serve ourself many years before we gain our own confidence. haskins
Our opinion of others is not so variable as our opinion of
ourselves. vauvenargues
What others think of us would be of little moment did it
not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
SANTAYANA
Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
To know oneself is to foresee oneself; to foresee oneself amounts to playing a part. valery
The greater part of those who have written their memoirs
have only shown us their bad actions or their weaknesses
when they happen to have mistaken them for deeds of prowess
or fine instincts, a thing they often do. tocqueville
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and
the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide
is something that is not there. hoffer
Men often mistake themselves, but they never forget them-
Se ^ ves * HALIFAX
[ 22 ]
Self-Knowledge
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, a man cannot forget
except himself, his own character. Schopenhauer
Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire
to seem so. la Rochefoucauld
To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with
with oneself; that is to say, alone — but that is all it means.
VALERY
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. dr. Johnson
It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affecta-
tion only by means of another. valery
There is nothing man cannot make natural; there is nothing
natural which he cannot lose. pascal
Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experi-
ence — if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.
UCHTENBERG
[ 23 ]
Sleep and Dreams
Animals awaken, first facially, then bodily. Men's bodies
wake up before their faces do. The animal sleeps within its
body; man sleeps with his body m his mind. chazal
In sleep, body and soul are chemically bound. The soul is
divided into equal parts throughout the body; the personality
is neutralized. novalis
Many a man's secret harm (to some favored beings secret
even to themselves) may be discovered by observing where
they place their hand or hands when lost in thought or
vacant, and what is their commonest posture in sleep.
COLERIDGE
Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find out the secrets of our own nature. They are test objects. emerson
We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
NOVALIS
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
SHAKESPEARE
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real
characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But
an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever-
wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we
should never have dreamed of such a thing. thoreau
[ 24 ]
Sleep and Dr earns
If a laborer were to dream for twelve hours every night that
he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a
king who should dream for twelve hours every night that he
was a laborer. pascal
We use up too much artistic effort in our dreams; in conse-
quence our waking life is often poor. nietzsche
Dreams have as much influence as actions. mallarme
I cannot say I was hostile to him, nor friendly either: I have
never dreamed of him. lichtenberg
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares,
were there any danger of their coming true. l. p. smith
Among all human constructions the only ones that avoid
the dissolving hands of time are castles in the air.
DE ROBERTO
[ 25 ]
The Human Mind
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our
actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involun-
tary.
PASCAL
His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him
l as t. CHAMFORT
Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never
cured by another. chesterfield
All passions exaggerate: it is because they do that they are
passions. chamfort
We are sometimes moved by passion and suppose it zeal.
THOMAS A KEMPIS
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. Santayana
Every zeal or passion brings with it a superstitious conviction
of having to face a day of reckoning: even the zeal of a dis-
believer. PAVESE
Nothing is more injurious to the character and to the intellect
than the suppression of generous emotion. chapman
Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.
[ 26 ]
HOFFER
The Human Mind
Terrible consequences there will always be when the mean
vices attempt to mimic the grand passions. Great men will
never do great mischief but for some great end. e. burke
No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so
much as respectable selfishness. macdonald
Passion makes the best observations and draws the most
wretched conclusions. richter
To be in a Passion you Good may do.
But no Good if a Passion is in you.
BLAKE
The ardor chills us which we do not share. patmore
Emotion has taught mankind to reason. vauvenargues
There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe.
vauvenargues
Desire engenders belief: if we are not usually aware of this,
it is because most belief-creating desires last as long as we do.
PROUST
Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.
vauvenargues
We are all capable of evil thoughts, but only very rarely of
evil deeds: we can all do good deeds, but very few of us can
think good thoughts. pavese
[ 27 ]
Humanity
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. blake
Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely
cruel, magnanimous, humble, or self-sacrificing when we see
ourselves actors in a performance. hoffer
It is harder to hide feelings we have than to feign those we
lack. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Chemists at least can use analysis; patients suffering from a
malady whose cause is unknown to them can call in a
doctor; criminal cases are more or less cleared up by the
examining magistrate. But for the disconcerting actions of
our fellow men, we rarely discover the motive. proust
The motive for a deed usually changes during its performance:
at least, after the deed has been done, it seems quite different.
HEBBEL
Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives. la Rochefoucauld
All our final resolutions are made in a state of mind which
is not going to last. proust
“Every man has his price.” This is not true. But for every
man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary
to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness,
self-sacrifice — and there is nothing you cannot get them to
swallow. To their souls, these are the icing, the tidbit: other
kinds of soul have others. nietzsche
[ 28 ]
The Human Mind
The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure.
This function is performed by persons, relationships, pro-
fessions, the fatherland, the world, or, finally, for the really
arrogant — I mean our modern pessimists — by the Good God
Himself. nietzsche
Taken as a whole, men will only devote their enthusiasm,
their time, and their energy to matters in which their pas-
sions have a personal interest. But their personal interests,
however powerful they may be, will never carry them very far
or very high unless they can be made to seem noble and
legitimate in their own eyes by being allied to some great
cause in which the whole human race can join.
TOCQUEVILLE
Imagination is nature's equal, sensuality her slave. goethe
A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn
out to be as high as we had hoped. proust
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than
the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beau-
tiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which
moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a
green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.
BLAKE
The epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe opera- tions which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimental- ists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectator. shaw
[291
Humanity
Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
PROUST
How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound! joubert
The map appears to us more real than the land. Lawrence
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. whitehead
Suspicion is rather a virtue than a fault, as long as it doth
like a dog that watcheth, and doth not bite. Halifax
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for
our suspicions by finding what we suspected. thoreau
Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not
of our side. Halifax
Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife,
very often needed, but seldom minded. chesterfield
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind
belief in another. lichtenberg
The most positive men are the most credulous. pope
A very popular error — having the courage of one's convictions:
rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon
one's convictions. Nietzsche
[ 30 ]
The Human Mind
I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for
things than to find out whether the things are so.
MONTAIGNE
Man is a reasonable animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. wilde
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
JEFFERSON
We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.
PASCAL
That Man, who flees from truth, should have invented the mirror is the greatest of historical miracles. hebbel
Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipt out when
Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
SHAKESPEARE
Man is ice to truth and fire to falsehood. la fontaine
I care about truth not for truth’s sake but for my own.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong. hazlitt
When a man say him do not mind, then him mind.
NEGRO PROVERB
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
NIETZSCHE
[ 31 ]
Humanity
It’s the deaf people that create the lies. irish proverb It is the unconscious liar that is the greatest liar.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Weak and impulsive people may be, and very often are, sincere, but they are seldom truthful. collins
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. mencken
Honesty is often in the wrong. lucan
The course of true anything never does run smooth.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Memory and Conscience
Could we know what men are most apt to remember, we might know what they are most apt to do. Halifax
You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories, lec
What was hard to endure is sweet to recall.
CONTINENTAL PROVERB
[ 32 ]
Memory and Conscience
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with
lying. MONTAIGNE
The memory will seldom be unmannerly but where it is
unkind. Halifax
If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have
had it long ago. hazlitt
Conscience is a cur that will let you get past it but that you
cannot keep from barking. anonymous
Conscience is thoroughly well bred and soon leaves off talking
to those who do not wish to hear it. samuel butler (ii)
Even the voice of conscience undergoes mutation. lec
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion
of others. sir henry taylor
Half-a-dozen superstitious terrors have saved many a cash
drawer. haskins
He who has no conscience makes up for it by lacking it.
LEC
Gentlemen, let us distrust our first reactions; they are in- variably much too favorable. nietzsche
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
[ 33 ]
BLAKE
Humanity
Experience informs us that the first defense of weak minds
is to recriminate. Coleridge
One need not mind stealing, but one must cry out at people
whose mmds are so befuddled that they do not know theft
when they see it. chapman
The men who can be charged with fewest failings are generally
most ready to allow them. dr. joiinson
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
CARLYLE
A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by
good manners, is an excellent thing; but to “hunger and
thirst” after it is often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes.
BROAD
No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious. goethe
At times, although one is perfectly in the right, one's legs
tremble; at other times, although one is completely in the
wrong, birds sing in one’s soul. rozinov
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods
we resort to to hide them. la Rochefoucauld
And ofttimes excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.
SHAKESPEARE
Memory and Conscience
When someone behaves like a beast, he says: “After all,
one is only human/' But when he is treated like a beast, he
says: “After all, one is human.” kraus
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. wilde
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence
of our past behavior. l. p. smith
Where there is yet shame, there may in time be virtue.
DR. JOHNSON
Remorse begets reform. cowper
There are some people who are very resourceful At being remorseful,
And who apparently feel that the best way to make friends Is to do something terrible and then make amends.
NASH
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall, he would be willing to repeat. bradley
The memory and conscience never did, nor never will, agree
about forgiving injuries. Halifax
Many forgive injuries, but none ever forgave contempt.
ANONYMOUS
We forgive others when it suits us. pavese
Few heads are sensitive to coals of fire. haskins
[ 35 ]
Humanity
That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.
EMERSON
People who live in chateaux
Shouldn't throw tomateaux.
MORTON
Indulgence to oneself and severity toward others are at bottom
one and the same fault. vapereau
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity
for that which shocks you. thoreau
Whatever you condemn, you have done yourself.
GRODDECK
Whoever supermoralizes unmoralizes. Coleridge
Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best.
MARIANNE MOORE
Self-Love
If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life
would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to
endure it. Schopenhauer
[ 36 ]
Self-Love
Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be
void of purpose. nietzsche
How glorious it is — and also how painful — to be an exception.
MUSSET
Every man likes the smell of his own farts.
ICELANDIC PROVERB
Take egotism out, and you would castrate the benefactors.
EMERSON
The most vulnerable and at the same time the most un- conquerable thing is human self-love; indeed, it is through being wounded that its power grows and can, in the end, be- come tremendous. nietzsche
When man, that master of destruction, of self-destruction,
wounds himself, it is that very wound which forces him to live.
NIETZSCHE
One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk. nietzsche
He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a
self-despiser. nietzsche
We would rather run ourselves down than not speak of our-
selves at all. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves
we feel no one else has a right to blame us. wilde
[ 57 ]
Humanity
All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order
to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness
of self-praise, and all the reproach of falsehood.
DR. JOHNSON
The most silent people are generally those who think most
highly of themselves. hazlitt
Never to talk about oneself is a very refined form of hypocrisy.
NIETZSCHE
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity,
skeptically of skepticism. pascal
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the
statue that wears a figleaf. mark twain
It is a form of coquetry to emphasize the fact that you do
not indulge in it. la Rochefoucauld
In disrespecting, we show that we still maintain a sense of
respect. Nietzsche
Excessive scruple is only hidden pride.
GOETHE
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism
intolerantly is to share it. santayana
Sclf-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blush-
ing* SHAW
Self-Love
Pride will spit in pride's face.
THOMAS FULLER
Self-interest speaks all sorts of languages and plays all sorts
of roles, even that of disinterestedness. la Rochefoucauld
There may be Herostratoi who set fire to the temples in which
their image is worshiped. nietzsche
In mere solicitude man remains essentially with himself, even
if he is moved with extreme pity. buber
To observations which ourselves we make
We grow more fond for the observer's sake.
pope
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage —
he won't encounter many rivals in his love. lichtenberg
The ring always believes that the finger lives for it. chazal
The golden fleece of self-love is proof against cudgel blows
but not against pinpricks. nietzsche
Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide
our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape
the notice of others. dr. johnson
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
[ 39 ]
Humanity
Pride always recoups its losses and loses nothing even when
it dispenses with vanity. la Rochefoucauld
Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious
if they were suddenly restored to health. pavese
Self is the Gorgon. Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men
and lives. Pride studies it for itself and is turned to stone.
CHESTERTON
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. swift
A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly but
vanity. rousseau
The vain man hates his like, the exceptional man seeks out
his. RICHTER
It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity
defeats it own purposes. chesterfield
Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the grada-
tions of their decay. chesterfield
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. conrad
Those who write against vanity want the glory of having
written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and
I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who
read this have also, pascal
[ 40 ]
Human Vices
Vanity is the greatest of all flatterers. la Rochefoucauld
We sometimes imagine we hate flattery, but we only hate
the way we are flattered. la Rochefoucauld
To ask for advice is in nine cases out of ten to tout for flattery.
COLLINS
We refuse praise from a desire to be praised twice.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering. shaw
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than
undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that
our powers of judgment are more completely exposed by being
overpraised than by being unjustly underestimated.
NIETZSCHE
He who praises you for what you lack wishes to take from you what you have. juan manuel
Human Vices
No man’s vice is so much against nature that it destroys even
the last traces of nature. saint atjgustine
[41]
Humanity
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien.
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
POPE
More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.
SURTEES
To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. lichtenberg
A man has virtues enough if, on account of them, he deserves
forgiveness for his faults. lichtenberg
The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. hazlitt
There is a division of labor, even in vice. Some people addict
themselves to the speculation only, others to the practice.
HAZLITT
The unfulfilled desires of the virtuous are evil; the unfulfilled desires of the vicious are good; and conduct is not, as Matthew Arnold said, three-fourths of life; it is not even three-fourths of conduct. muir
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they
had no good in them. la Rochefoucauld
If virtue had everything her own way she would be as in-
sufferable as dominant factions generally are.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 42 ]
Human Vices
A few hours of mountain climbing turn a rascal and a saint
into two pretty similar creatures. Fatigue is the shortest way
to Equality and Fraternity — and, in the end. Liberty will
surrender to Sleep. nietzsche
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice offers to virtue.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be with- out temptations. bagehot
Men’s virtues have their seasons even as fruits have.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
The virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth
the sentinel. goldsmith
Virtue is too often merely local.
DR. JOHNSON
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavor,
Content to dwell in decencies forever.
POPE
Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having
been vice. walpole
I am not mortified by our vice, but I own our virtue makes
me ashamed. Emerson
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a
mean mind. bagehot
[ 43 ]
Humanity
Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else’s
body. PAVESE
Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one
should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy. goethe
He that fears you present will hate you absent.
THOMAS FULLER
Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent. richter
Revenge is barren: its delight is murder, and its satiety, despair. Schiller
Weak men are apt to be cruel, because they stick at nothing
that may repair the ill effect of their mistakes. Halifax
Anger raiseth invention, but it overheateth the oven.
HALIFAX
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
BLAKE
To be angry is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
POPE
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. marcus aurelius
Think, when you are enraged at anyone, what would probably
become your sentiments should he die during the dispute.
SHENSTONE
[ 44 ]
Human Vices
In all perplexity there is a portion of fear, which predisposes
the mind to anger. Coleridge
Malice may be sometimes out of breath, envy never.
HALIFAX
Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize. lec
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation
which we bear in ourselves. simone weil
Malice is a greater magnifying glass than kindness.
HALIFAX
The malicious have a dark happiness. hugo
Malice, like lust, when it is at the height, doth not know
shame. Halifax
There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though
none in particular are ill-natured. Halifax
One does not hate so long as one despises. Nietzsche
The way we exclaim over certain people's good faith, dis-
interestedness, and honesty is not so much praise of them
as disparagement of all mankind. la brtjyere
I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.
COLERIDGE
[ 45 ]
Humanity
Arrogance in persons of merit affronts us more than arrogance
in those without merit: merit itself is an affront.
NIETZSCHE
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual. bacon
Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of love of
justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at de-
served good fortune. hazlitt
The gilded sheath of pity conceals the dagger of envy.
NIETZSCHE
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. dr. johnson
Familiarity in one's superiors causes bitterness, for it may
not be returned. Nietzsche
There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude
is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because
recompense is a pleasure but because obligation is a pain.
DR. JOHNSON
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
chesterfield
Confronted by outstanding merit in another, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love. goethe
His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no
man thinks much of that which he despises. dr. johnson
[ 46 ]
Human Vices
The girl who can't dance sa}s the band can't play.
YIDDISH PROVERB
There are many things that we would throw away, if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. wilde
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating oursehes on their defects. hazlitt
The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. beerbohm
Cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.
CHESTERFIELD
What's left over from the thief is spent on the fortune-teller.
YIDDISH PROVERB
I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intel- ligence. TOCQUEVILLE
Idleness and the incapacity for leisure correspond with one
another; leisure is the contrary of both. Leisure is only possible
to a man who is at one with himself and also at one with
the world. These are the presuppositions of leisure, for leisure
is an affirmation. Idleness, on the other hand, is rooted in
the omission of these two affirmations. pieper
Acedia: the malady of monks.
[ 47 ]
BAUDELAIRE
Humanity
The essence of acedia is the refusal to acquiesce in one's
own being. pieper
A loafer always has the correct time. kin hubbard
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and
therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide
his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
DR. JOHNSON
Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair.
COLTON
It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
SCHOPENHAUER
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others. samuel butler (ii)
Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
As a rule, for no one does life drag more disagreeably than for him who tries to speed it up. richter
It is better to do the most trifling thing in the world than to regard half an hour as a trifle. goethe
I have so much to do that I am going to bed.
SAVOYARD PROVERB
Only when vitality is low do people find material things
oppressive and ideal things unsubstantial. Santayana
[ 48 ]
Human Virtues
Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a
disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself. Meredith
Those who are fond of setting things to rights have no great objection to seeing them wrong. hazlitt
The friend of all humanity is not to my taste. moliere
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that on the whole it is a question whether the benevolence of man- kind does most good or harm. bagehot
Human Virtues
We can do noble acts without ruling earth and sea.
ARISTOTLE
A good person can put himself in the place of a bad person more easily than a bad person can put himself in the place of a good person. richter
The good displeases us when we have not yet grown up to it.
NIETZSCHE
One good deed has many claimants.
[ 49 ]
YIDDISH PROVERB
Humanity
We do not have to acquire humility. There is humility in
us — only we humiliate our selves before false gods.
SIMONE WEIL
It is always the secure who are humble. Chesterton
I am not one of those who say, “It is nothing; it is a woman
drowning/ 7 anonymous
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
SANTAYANA
Kindness is in our power, but fondness is not.
DR. JOHNSON
When I am condemned, and condemn myself utterly, I think straightway, “But I rely on my love for some things / 7
thoreau
Genuine responsibility exists only where there is real re- sponding. BUBER
Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It
must be born with men, or else all the obligations in the
world will not create it. A real sense of a kind thing is a gift
of nature, and never was, nor can be acquired. Halifax
I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.
GOETHE
Whistling to keep up courage is good practice for whistling.
HASKINS
[ 50 ]
Success and Failure
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be
capable of with the world looking on.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.
THOMAS FULLER
He that can make a fire well can end a quarrel.
ENGLISH PROVERB
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
MONTAIGNE
Tact consists in knowing how far to go in going too far.
COCTEAU
Tact is the intelligence of the heart. anonymous
It is a great art to saunter.
THOREAU
Success and Failure
Passions tyrannize over mankind; but ambition keeps all the others in check. la bruyere
Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes by keeping them
always in show and in public, like a statue in a street.
dr. fuller
[ 51 ]
Humanity
The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as
many as can help in making his fortune. la bruyere
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds
despicable. joubert
Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.
EPICURUS
There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here/' Emerson
Everybody wants to be somebody: nobody wants to grow.
GOETHE
Men who pass most comfortably through the world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
HARRIET MARTINEAU
Snobbery haunts those who are not reconciled with them- selves; evolution is the hope of the immature. Santayana
Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.
EMERSON
Only strong natures can really be sweet ones: those that seem sweet are in general only weak, and may easily turn sour.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something capricious in what is necessary, and who
[ 52 ]
Success and Failure
would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a
religion of surrendering to it. goethe
Every man who refuses to accept the conditions of life sells
his SOUl. BAUDELAIRE
Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
TOCQUEVILLE
He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. Halifax
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity.
BLAKE
Necessity poisons wounds which it cannot heal.
VAUVENARGUES
I must complain the cards are ill-shuffled, till I have a good hand. swift
A prudent man will think more important what fate has
conceded to him than what it has denied. gracian
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see fortune;
for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible. bacon
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
BACON
To maintain that our successes are due to Providence and
not to our own cleverness is a cunning way of increasing in
our own eyes the importance of our successes. pavese
[ 53 ]
Humanity
Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.
MME. NECKER
Adversity introduces a man to himself. anonymous
It has been said that misfortune sharpens our wits, but to the
extent that it does so, it makes us worse; fortunately, it often
simply dulls them. nietzsche
The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne
from a sort of dignity belonging to them. hazlitt
Characters that are depressed at a mere nothing are the kind
best suited to endure heavy blows. pavese
Experience is only half of experience. goethe
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him. aldous huxley
Few men are worthy of experience. The majority let it corrupt
them. joubert
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
WILDE
Our very life depends on everything's
Recurring till we answer from within.
FROST
If a man has character, he also has his typical experience, which always recurs. nietzsche
[ 54 ]
Success and Failure
Late resounds what early sounded.
GOETHE
The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is
the human interest the old personality can take in new
activities. pavese
Better a monosyllabic life than a ragged and muttered one; let
its report be short and round like a rifle, so that it may hear
its own echo in the surrounding silence. thoreau
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen,
few in pursuit of the goal. nietzsche
Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal;
howe\er, if the melody has not reached its end, it would also
not have reached its goal. A parable. nietzsche
Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good
company by the way. Halifax
Men should do with their hopes as they do with tame fowl:
cut their wings that they may not fly over the wall.
HALIFAX
Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
O. W. HOLMES, JR.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. bacon
Hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one.
[ 55 ]
GRACIAN
Humanity
Hope . . . suggests that every conclusion unfavorable to
oneself must be an error of the mind. valery
Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or
from his body or from someone else or from events.
VAL&RY
Vows begin when hope dies. Leonardo da vinci
Optimism is a kind of heart stimulus — the digitalis of failure.
E. HUBBARD
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. wilde
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with
an optimist. e. hubbard
Humanity never produces optimists till it has ceased to
produce happy men. Chesterton
A cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one.
Nay, the fleeter and better the racer i$, who hath once missed
his way, the farther he leaveth it behind. bacon
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities
we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use
of our defects. tocqueville
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to
get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs
his conduct in the world. freud
Success and Failure
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very
industrious. samuel butler (ii)
Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent
is nothing whatever. valery
Make your cross your crutch; but, when you see another man
do it, beware of him. shaw
We wholly conquer only what we assimilate. gide
A man must (as the books on success say) give “his best";
and what a small part of a man “his best" is! His second and
third best are often much better. Chesterton
Talent is an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
NIETZSCHE
For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or
later in life. Margaret fuller
To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must
overestimate his capacities. goethe
Consciousness of our powers augments them.
vauvenargues
Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral
weakness; when the danger increases, she gives us greater
courage. goethe
[ 57 ]
Humanity
Sometimes a lack of tact — or what seems a mere lack of
tact — comes between a character and its destiny; or a man
dies from a cold in the head. chapman
Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.
COLERIDGE
Of two things we cannot sufficiently beware: of obstinacy if
we confine ourselves to our proper field, of inadequacy if we
desert it. goethe
Mistakes are always initial.
PAVESE
One seldom rushes into a single error. Rushing into the first
one, one always does too much. Hence one usually commits
another; and this time does too little. nietzsche
All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their
natural propensities. E. burke
We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put some-
thing before us to prevent us from seeing it. pascal
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man.
There are only four things certain since Social
Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns
to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling
back to the Fire.
[ 58 ]
KIPLING
Success and Failure
Man does not live long enough to profit from his faults.
LA BRUYERE
He that is lised to go forward and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favor, and is not the thing he was. bacon
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not
long retain either honesty or courage. dr. Johnson
More dangers have deceived men than forced them, bacon
There are people who so eagerly and insistently desire
some one thing that, for fear of missing it, they omit doing
nothing that will spoil their chances. la bruyere
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually
fearing you will make one. e. hubbard
A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of
his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that
he is at last entirely right. stevenson
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new
undertakings, and new forms of expression. hoffer
The secret of success in life is known only to those who have
not succeeded. collins
Perched on the loftiest throne in the world, we are still sitting
on our own behind. montaigne
[ 59 ]
Humanity
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with
as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely,
when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
SCHOPENHAUER
There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell. Chesterton
Ease is seldom got without some pains, but it is yet seldomer
kept without them. Halifax
We combat obstacles in order to get repose and, when got,
the repose is insupportable. henry adams
None think the great unhappy but the great. young
Nothing makes a man so cross as success. trollope
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
DISRAELI
When a man has been highly honored and has eaten a little he is most benevolent. Nietzsche
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the con- trary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter. maugham
All eminent sages are as despotic as generals, as discourteous and lacking m delicacy as generals, because they know they are safe from punishment. chekhov
[ 60 ]
Habit
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
HENRY ADAMS
Charm of manner is a sex attribute which has become a habit.
E. HUBBARD
Habit may be second nature, but it prevents us from knowing the real nature whose cruelties and enchantments it lacks.
PROUST
Habit is . . . not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. mark twain
To change one's habits has a smell of death.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity. proust
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste. Emerson
Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste. connolly
Between good sense and good taste is the difference between
cause and effect. la bruyere
People care more about being thought to have taste than
about being either good, clever, or amiable.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character. la Rochefoucauld
[ 61 ]
Humor
Only man has dignity; only man, therefore, can be funny*
FATHER KNOX
Every man is important if he loses his life; and every man
is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.
CHESTERTON
If a man wants to set up as an innkeeper and he does not
succeed, it is not comic. If, on the contrary, a girl asks to be
allowed to set up as a prostitute and she fails, as sometimes
happens, it is comic. Kierkegaard
A joke is an epitaph on an emotion. nietzsche
If you want to be witty, work on your character and say
what you think on every occasion. Stendhal
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loath-
some. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than
mirth. blake
If you want to make people weep, you must weep yourself.
If you want to make people laugh, your face must remain
serious. casanova
When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary con-
tempt for those who are. bulwer-lytton
[ 62 ]
Human Types
Irony is an abnormal growth; like the abnormally enlarged
liver of the Strasbourg goose, it ends by killing the individual.
KIERKEGAARD
Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while he
pisses on a grave. kraus
05 =^ 5 )
Human Types
The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he dis-
covers in men. Ordinary people see no difference between
men. pascal
All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those
who know it. Chesterton
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as
between us and others. montaigne
A man never reveals his character more vividly than when
portraying the character of another. richter
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world:
those who constantly divide the people of the world into
two classes, and those who do not. benchley
[ 63 ]
Humanity
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best
reveals his character. Schopenhauer
What divides men is less a difference in ideas than a likeness
in pretensions. beranger
There are people who are followed all through their lives by
a beggar to whom they have given nothing. kraus
There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed
themselves only on side dishes. ortega y gasset
One man is more concerned with the impression he makes
on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest
of mankind makes on him. The disposition of the first is
subjective, of the second objective. The one is, in the whole
of his existence, more in the nature of an idea which is
merely presented, the other more of the being who presents it.
SCHOPENHAUER
Two women. One when alone is exactly the same as she is in company, the other in company exactly what she is when she is alone. The latter holds herself badly in public, the former puts on evening dress when she dines by herself. One should marry neither. val&ry
There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man
has one main point of honor and a few minor ones. shaw
There are persons who always find a hair in their plate of
soup for the simple reason that, when they sit down before
it, they shake their heads until one falls in. hebbel
[ 64 ]
Human Types
We boil at different degrees.
EMERSON
On the heights it is warmer than those in the valley imagine.
NIETZSCHE
There are people who, like a little bridge, exist only that others should run over them. And the little bridge serves this, and the other, and the third generation. rozinov
A man ... so eager to be in advance of his age that he
pretended to be in advance of himself. Chesterton
Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance
to be good in their own fashion. nietzsche
There are plenty of people to whom the crucial problems of
their lives never get presented in terms that they can under-
stand. CHAPMAN
With one man, resignation stores up treasure in heaven; with
another man, it does but store explosives in the heart.
BRADLEY
A man who lacks nobility cannot have kindliness, he can only have good nature. chamfort
He who can take no interest in what is small will take false
interest in what is great. ruskin
The dearer a thing is, the cheaper as a general rule we sell it.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 65 ]
Humanity
Misers are very kind people: they amass wealth for those who
wish their death. Stanislaus, king of Poland
The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven
he makes an ideal of his hell. Nietzsche
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only
Wise. VOLTAIRE
The Talker
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues,
and can moderate their desires more than their words.
SPINOZA
Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nature out of them by pinching than addressing them. thoreau
No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to
say them deliberately. montaigne
Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your
less conscious purposes. george eliot
Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each
of us is constantly telling himself about things. proust
[ 66 ]
The Talker
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial
is really the tone in which it was conveyed. Nietzsche
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely.
You must be calm before you can utter oracles. thoreau
Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there
are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want
of something to say. sir henry taylor
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is
generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
DR. JOHNSON
A person may be very secretive and yet have no secrets.
E. HUBBARD
A man wants to make an important confession; but the man to whom he wished to unbosom himself does not come at once, so he says something quite different. Kierkegaard
There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide
is confession. webster
A confidence always aims at glory, scandal, excuse, propaganda.
VALERY
What is said when drunk has been thought out beforehand.
FLEMISH PROVERB
He that talketh what he knoweth will also talk what he knoweth not. bacon
[ 67 ]
Humanity
Three signs of a rogue: interrupting during a story, vicious-
ness in play, telling nasty jokes. anonymous
It is the dread of something happening, something unknown
and dreadful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker
of talk from dying out. l. p. smith
As he knew not what to say, he swore.
BYRON
Abuse resembles a church procession; it always returns to
the point from which it set out. monti
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
MORLEY
Silence is the unbearable repartee. Chesterton
Human Folly
Neither man nor woman can be worth anything until they
have discovered that they are fools. This is the first step
toward becoming either estimable or agreeable; and until
it is taken there is no hope. Melbourne
A fool is his own informer.
[68]
YIDDISH PROVERB
Human Folly
Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men
are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly
all our disasters come of a few fools having the “courage of
their convictions/' patmore
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom,
no clock can measure. blare
Folly is often more cruel in the consequence than malice
can be in the intent. Halifax
The shlemiehl lands on his back and bruises his nose.
YIDDISH PROVERB
Send a fool to close the shutters and he’ll close them all
over town. Yiddish proverb
After taking ninety-nine years to climb a stairway, the tortoise
falls and says there is a curse on haste. Maltese proverb
When the ass was invited to the wedding feast he said,
“They need more wood and water.” Bosnian proverb
Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some
strong principle. Melbourne
Folly may often be only an abusive term of Envy signifying
Courage. Hardihood and Foolhardiness are as disparate as
green and yellow; but green and yellow will both appear
yellow to the jaundiced eye. coleridge
[ 69 ]
Humanity
Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner
in which he behaves toward fools. amiel
He who has not lost his head over some things has no head
tO lose. RICHTER
The man who lives free from folly is not so wise as he thinks.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Once upon a time there was a man who became wise. He learned not to make a single gesture which was not useful. Soon afterward he was shut up. valery
His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who
is wise enough to be made a fool of. To be “taken in” every-
where is to see the inside of everything. Chesterton
[ 70 ]
(f~b
RELIGION AND GOD
Religion and God
People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are
mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.
SANTAYANA
Religion is a disease, but it is a noble disease, heraclitus
The first ideas of religion arose, not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life. hume
Religion consists in believing that everything which happens
is extraordinarily important. It can never disappear from the
world, precisely for this reason. pavese
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training,
for it trains people as to how they shall think.
SCHOPENHAUER
Apart from religion, expressed in ways generally intelligible,
populations sink into the apathetic task of daily survival, with
minor alleviations. whitehead
Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not meditated much
upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum , may
possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably
make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman. Berkeley
Religion and God
To the symmetrical natures religion is indeed a crown of
glory; nevertheless, so far as this world is concerned, they
can grow and prosper without it. But to the unsymmetrical
natures religion is a necessary condition of successful work
even in this world. acton
It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke
about it. CHESTERTON
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. goethe
A childish belief in the marvelous turns a grown man into
a coward, and the same belief consoles him in his darkest
hours. HERZEN
We make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear. Shakespeare
Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive
layer of the psyche than skepticism. goethe
The choice was put to them whether they would like to be
kings or kings' couriers. Like children they all wanted to be
couriers. So now there are a great many couriers; they post
through the world and, as there are no kings left, shout to
each other their meaningless and obsolete messages. They
would gladly put an end to their wretched lives, but they dare
not because of their oath of service. kafka
To believe means to recognize that we must wait until the
veil shall be removed. Unbelief prematurely unveils itself.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
[ 74 ]
Religion and God
Faith is illuminative, not operative; it does not force obe-
dience, though it increases responsibility; it heightens guilt,
it does not prevent sin. newman
The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the
heavens. Doubtless that is so, but it proves nothing against
the heavens, for the heavens signify simply: the impossibility
Of CrOWS. KAFKA
Faith is never identical with piety.
BARTH
Nothing fortifies skepticism more than that there are some
who are not skeptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.
PASCAL
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what
we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what
we condemn. montaigne
There is a great deal of skepticism in believers; and a good
deal of belief in non-believers; the only question is where
we decide to give our better energy. “Lord, I believe; help
thou mine unbelief' may, and should, be prayed two ways.
WILLLAMS
A man often preaches his beliefs precisely when he has lost
them and is looking everywhere for them, and, on such oc-
casions, his preaching is by no means at its worst.
MELANCTHON
He who believes in nothing still needs a girl to believe in him.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
[IS]
Religion and God
The means that allow men, up to a certain point, to go with-
out religion are perhaps, after all, the only means we still
possess for bringing mankind back, by a long and roundabout
path, to a state of faith. tocqueville
Anti-clericalism is part of the price the priesthood pay for
their vocation — just as, if ever poets were to become the
acknowledged legislators of the world, a strong anti-poetic
movement would have to be encouraged. But then also the
vocation of the poets as of the priesthood must be respected.
WILLIAMS
You can change your faith without changing gods, and vice
versa. lec
Oaths are the fossils of piety.
SANTAYANA
The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.
FROUDE
As students of nature we are pantheists, as poets polytheists, as moral beings monotheists. goethe
Truth rests with God alone, and a little bit with me.
YIDDISH PROVERB
It is easy to know God so long as you do not tax yourself
with defining Him. joubert
We dance around in a ring and suppose.
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
[ 76 ]
FROST
Religion and God
The task of theology is to show how the world is founded
on something beyond transient fact, and how it issues in
something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal
world is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of the-
ology to express that element in perishing lives which is
undying by reason of its expression of perfection proper to
our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life
includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow.
WHITEHEAD
Among medieval and modern philosophers anxious to estab-
lish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit
has prevailed of paying him metaphysical compliments.
WHITEHEAD
To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very
different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking
him. KIERKEGAARD
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
PASCAL
From a Christian point of view the whole of learned theology
is really a corollary; and is declined like mensa.
KIERKEGAARD
It is as difficult to be quite orthodox as to be quite healthy. Yet the need for orthodoxy, like the need for health, is imperative. williams
Orthodoxy is reticence.
ANONYMOUS
Speculations over God and the World are almost always
idle, the thoughts of idlers, spectators of the theater of life.
[ 77 ]
Religion and God
“Is there a God?” “Has Man a soul?” “Why must we die?”
“How many hairs has the Devil's Grandmother?” “When
is the Day of Judgment?” — all these are idle questions, and
one fool can ask more of them than a hundred wise men
can answer. Nevertheless, teachers, parents, bishops, must
give answers to such questions because, otherwise, the idlers
will spread their corruption. Every idle question can ensnare
at least one innocent heart. The Church Councils found
themselves in the position of parents whose daughters are
on the point of being seduced by young louts. The dogmas
of the Church have to deal with blasphemous scoundrels,
and therefore they have to speak their language, the lan-
guage of shamelessness. rosenstock-huessy
The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a
Divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of
prophecies, are ideas which, anyone can see, need but a touch
to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. If
some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders
might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased
wrong about the nature of symbolism might have broken all
the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might
stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or
break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within
strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general
human liberties. The Church had to be careful; if only that
the world might be careless. Chesterton
The middle class in England did not wholly lose the habit
of going to church until they acquired motor cars — so neg-
ligible in the end is intellect itself. williams
All the destruction in Christian Europe has arisen from
deism, which is natural religion. blake
[781
Religion and God
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman
world were all considered by the people as equally true; by
the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as
equally useful. gibbon
Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair; Thra-
cians have gods with gray eyes and red hair.
XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON
The people would not believe in God at all if they were
not permitted to believe wrong in Him. Halifax
If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
YIDDISH PROVERB
The world would use us just as it did the martyrs, if we
loved God as they did. bishop wilson
A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that
all the people about him were influenced by the religion
which they professed would find himself ruined by night.
MACAULAY
People will sacrifice themselves for the State, the Church, and even for God, so long as these remain their creation, their idea, and are not taken too personally. nietzsche
Men pretend to serve Almighty God who doth not need it,
but make use of him because they need him. Halifax
Alas, what should we do, said the girl, if there were no God.
LICHTENBERG
[ 79 ]
Religion and God
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not
enough to make us love one another. swift
Most people really believe that the Christian commandments
(e.g., to love one's neighbor as oneself) are intentionally a
little too severe — like putting the clock ahead half an hour to
make sure of not being late in the morning. Kierkegaard
The Christianity of the majority consists roughly of two
notions: first of all the saying about the “little child,” that
one becomes a Christian as a little child, that of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven; the second is the thief on the cross.
People live by virtue of the former — in death they reckon upon consoling themselves with the example of the thief. That is the sum of their Christianity; and correctly defined it is a mixture of childishness and crime. kierkegaard
A vision of truth which does not call upon us to get out of
our armchair — why, this is the desideratum of mankind.
CHAPMAN
There are ladies who, finding by the too visible decay of their good looks that they can shine no more by that light , put on the varnish of an affected devotion to keep up some kind of figure in the world. Halifax
When Lothario turns to God, the undertaker gets ready his
bill. TOLSTOI
Grigorovich has never been a caretaker at the docks; that
is why he holds the Kingdom of Heaven so cheaply. He is
fibbing. chekhov
[ 80 ]
Religion and God
There has never been a kingdom given to so many civil wars
as that of Christ. Montesquieu
Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do
it for conscience’s sake. pascal
Holy indignation is a proof that we should do the same thing
ourselves, and easy tears are a certain sign of a hard heart.
PATMORE
There is not even enough religion in the world to destroy the world’s religions. nietzsche
The Moral Christian is the Cause
Of the Unbeliever & his Laws.
BLAKE
He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect of church better than Chris- tianity and end in lo\ ing himself better than all. coleridge
Most men’s anger about religion is as if two men should
quarrel for a lady they neither of them care for. Halifax
Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country
fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery,
without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
HAZLITT
Every time a priest adds his personal fervor to the “canons,” something terrible results fa hypocrite, a Torquemada); only when the priest is “slack” is it right. Why is this so? Why so here? rozinov
[ 81 ]
Religion and God
Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she
condemns with the dogmas she professes. acton
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise, and their conscience that it is wrong.
BAGEHOT
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be
a crime to examine the laws of heat. morley
It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
NEWMAN
Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from com- pulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
JEFFERSON
Every sect is a moral check on its neighbor. Competition
is as wholesome in religion as in commerce. landor
The Bible: a book which either reads us or is worthless.
CHAZAL
You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.
CHAPMAN
He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. saint augustine
My love is my weight.
[ 82 ]
SAINT AUGUSTINE
Religion and God
Nor creature nor creator was ever without love, natural or
rational. The natural is always without error, but the other
can err by having an evil object or through too little or too
much vigor. Hence you may understand that love is the source
of every virtue in you and of every deed which deserves
punishment. dante
Love is not consolation, it is light. simone weil
But humor is also the joy which has overcome the world.
KIERKEGAARD
Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a con- dition of the world, like logic. wittcenstein
What makes God happy? Seeing a poor devil find a treasure
and give it back. Yiddish proverb
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
E. HUBBARD
The alternative to being with Love at the center of the circle is to disorder the circumference for our own purposes.
WILLIAMS
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise; because of impatience we cannot return. kafka
To have sinned means that you are convinced that, in some
mysterious way , what you have done will bring misfortune
on you in the future; that it has broken some mysterious
law of harmony, and is a link in a chain of past and future
discords. favese
[ 83 ]
Religion and God
The difference between sin and tribulation is that the tempta-
tions of sin are with desire, and the temptations of tribulation
against desire. The opposite tactics have therefore to be used.
Those whom sin tempts with desire do well to avoid the
danger, but in relation to tribulation that is precisely the
danger, for each time one thinks one has saved oneself by
avoiding the danger, the danger becomes greater next time.
KIERKEGAARD
Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite char-
itable wish that other people should exhibit a similar con-
trition. WILLIAMS
It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed
than to repent of those we intend to commit. billings
Certainly our sins and faults destroy the good. But our efforts
after the good also destroy it. The very pursuit of goodness
becomes a hunt; that which was to be our lord becomes our
victim. It is necessary to behave well here? We do. What
is the result? The destruction of some equal good.
WILLIAMS
When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: “My dear, we live in an age of transition.” dean inge
The devil's boots don't creak. Scottish proverb
Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial
chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again: finally
it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of
the ceremony. kafka
[84]
Religion and God
The devil never tempts us with more success than when he
tempts us with a sight of our own good actions.
BISHOP WILSON
If evil did not make its dwelling in man, it would be much more evil than it is. Evil cannot be as evil as it wills to be because it is tied to man. Because it is in man, a watch is kept on evil. In man, the image of God, evil is constricted; it is there under custody as in a prison. The destructive power of evil would be unlimited if it were on earth alone, un- sheltered by God's image. The earth is saved from destruction because, in God's image, a watch is kept upon evil. picard
Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to Hell.
JONSON
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. c. s. lewis
When a man has gone astray to the point of perdition and
is about to sink, his last speech, the sign, is: “And yet some-
thing better in me is being lost." Kierkegaard
Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak
of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a sum-
mary court in perpetual session. kafka
It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious cour-
age to rejoice. Kierkegaard
In German the word sein signifies both things: to be, and
to belong to Him. kafka
[ 85 ]
Religion and God
Never let fear create the God of childhood; fear is the creation
of a wicked spirit; shall the devil become the grandfather of
God? RICHTER
It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever
we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation
— of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme
of things — the thought of God comes into one's mind.
VAN GOGH
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
Take which you please; you can never have both. Emerson
We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in
everything, except that he does not exist, since we have not
reached the point where God exists. simone weil
The more we understand individual things, the more we
understand God. spinoza
The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints. lec
God gives Himself to men as powerful or as perfect — it is
for them to choose. simone weil
The distance between the necessary and the good is the
distance between the creature and the creator.
simone weil
We always keep God waiting while we admit more importunate
suitors. CHAZAL
[ 86 ]
Religion and God
In a small house God has His comer, in a big house He
has to stand in the hall. Swedish proverb
There is not the least use preaching to anyone unless you
chance to catch them ill. Sydney smith
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
KIERKEGAARD
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
WILDE
What men usually ask of God when they pray is that two and two not make four. anonymous
Oaths in anguish rank with prayers. hodgson
There are few men who dare publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God. montaigne
If God bores you, tell Him that He bores you, that you prefer
the vilest amusements to His presence, that you only feel
at your ease when you are far from Him. fenelon
My God, my God, though I be quite forgot.
Let me not love Thee if I love Thee not.
HERBERT
O God, forasmuch as without Thee
We are not able to doubt Thee,
Lord, give us the grace To convince the whole race We know nothing whatever about Thee.
ANONYMOUS
[ 87 ]
Religion and God
That learning, thine Ambassador,
From thine allegeance wee never tempt.
That beauty, paradises flower For physicke made, from poyson be exempt,
That wit, born apt high good to doe,
By dwelling lazily
On Natures nothing, be not nothing too.
That our affections kill us not, nor dye,
Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry.
DONNE
Make me chaste and continent, but not just yet.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
“Heaven help me," she prayed, “to be decorative and to do
right.” FIRBANK
God will provide — ah, if only He would till he does so!
YIDDISH PROVERB
Heaven is too much like Earth to be spoken of as it really is, lest the generality should think it like their Earth, which is Hell. PATMORE
The joys of this life are not its own, but our dread of ascending
to a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own,
but our self-torment because of that dread. kafka
The law imposed what it did not give. Grace gives what it
imposes. pascal
All the passions produce prodigies. A gambler is capable of
watching and fasting almost like a saint; he has his pre-
monitions, etc. There is a great danger of loving God as the
gambler loves his game. simone weil
[ 88 ]
Religion and God
We should only do those righteous actions which we cannot
stop ourselves from doing, which we are unable not to do,
but, through well-directed attention, we should always keep
on increasing the number of these actions which wc are
unable not to do. simone weil
Grace is indeed required to turn a man into a saint; and he
who doubts this does not know what either a man or a saint is.
PASCAL
Most saints in the past were created by the people in spite of the priests. gourmont
Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more at-
tractive to us than the apostles? Emerson
There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere
wavering. kafka
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any
great height but just above the ground. It seems more de-
signed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.
KAFKA
There are countless places of refuge, there is only one place of salvation; but the possibilities of salvation, again, are as numerous as all the places of refuge. kafka
Even the things you do after the flesh are spiritual.
SAINT IGNATIUS
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action fine.
HERBERT
[ 89 ]
Religion and God
While others talked about what they would do if they heard
that they had to die within that very hour, Saint Charles
Borromaeus said he would continue his game of chess. For
he had begun it only in honor of God, and he could wish
for nothing better than to be called away in the midst of an
action undertaken in the honor of God. faber
If our worship is inward only, with our hearts and not our
hats, something necessary is lacking. andrewes
Sunday should be different from another day. People may
walk, but not throw stones at birds. dr. Johnson
The unproductive man is not a Christian, much less the
Destroyer. blake
Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love.
SIMONE WEIL
Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated. Macdonald
Love has but one word and it never repeats itself.
LACORDAIRE
Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it.
BLOY
You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided. kafka
[ 90 ]
Religion and God
The word of him who wishes to speak with men without
speaking with God is not fulfilled; but the word of him who
wishes to speak with God without speaking with men goes
astray. buber
We cannot know whether we love God, although there may
be strong reasons for thinking so, but there can be no doubt
about whether we love our neighbor or no. saint theresa
The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and
objective toward all others, terribly objective sometimes,
but the real task is in fact to be objective toward oneself
and subjective toward all others. Kierkegaard
Justice: to be ever ready to admit that another person is
something quite different from what we read when he is
there, or when we think about him. Or rather, to read in
him that he is certainly something different, perhaps some-
thing completely different, from what we read in him.
Every being cries out to be read differently, simone weil
To be in a distressing and painful condition because of others
is a thing we all naturally resent. Yet until we are willing to
accept the mere fact without resentment we can hardly be
said to admit that other people exist. We may reject, we
may rebuke, we may contend against their action. But thq
very first condition of admitting that their existence is as
real as our own is to allow that they have, as individuals,
as much right to act in the way they decide as we have. They
may be wicked and we good, or vice versa; that is a question
of moral judgment, and therefore another question. The main
fact is that we are compelled to admit their decision, and to
admit that our lives, and often our deaths, depend on that.
williams
[ 91 ]
Religion and God
To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we
should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal
love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it
mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not
refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each
person the relationship of one conception of the universe
to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of it.
SIMONE WEIL
It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level. simone weil
Whoever takes up the sword shall perish by the sword. And
whoever does not take up the sword (or lets it go) shall perish
on the cross. simone weil
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of its
triumph. kaika
He eats the droppings from his own table; thus he manages
to stuff himself fuller than the others for a little, but mean-
while he forgets how to eat from the table; thus in time even
the droppings cease to fall. xafka
Each Man is in his Spectre's power
Until the arrival of that hour.
When his humanity awake
And cast his own Spectre into the Lake.
BLAKE
There is superstition in avoiding superstition: when men think to do best, if they go farthest from the superstition formerly received. bacon
[ 92 ]
Religion and God
If the central cores of light, beauty, love, reason, power, and
order could — as perhaps they can — be presented m form to
the human faculties, man would discern in them mere black-
ness, monstrosity, fatuity, weakness, terror, and chaos. The
hideousness of some of the images worshiped by those among
the ancients who best understood the gods was not without
its meaning. patmore
Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas
or steam or table turning. It consists in the diminution of
the traces of original sin. baudelaire
The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our
fictitious morality and religion. Nietzsche
193 ]
czd
NATURE
c^=2)
Nature
The creation was an act of mercy. blake
One real world is enough. Santayana
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
BLAKE
Things solely good can, in some circumstances, exist; things
solely evil, never; for even those natures which are vitiated
by an evil will, so far indeed as they are vitiated, are evil, but
insofar as they are natures they are good. saint augustine
The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything
in it is a necessary evil. bradley
It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can
be woven about any universe containing several objects. The
fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment
is not a fact of any great philosophical significance. russell
[ 97 ]
Nature
No region can include itself as well. whitehead
Time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is
in the hands of a child. Heraclitus
There is no nature at an instant.
whitehead
Nature uses as little as possible of anything. kepler
Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is everything at once.
GOETHE
There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.
MONTAIGNE
Inequality is the cause of all local movements.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Force is only a desire for flight: it lives by violence and dies from liberty. Leonardo da vinci
Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in
experience. Leonardo da vinci
In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quan-
tity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures
exist only in pure geometry. valery
There was no Omphalos, either in the center of the earth
or of the sea. If any there be, it is visible to the gods, not
visible to mortals. epimenides of Crete
[ 98 ]
Nature
In nature, a thing is often full of character because of the
slightness of accentuation or even of character itself that, at
the first glance, it appears to have. delacroix
Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can
achieve. Santayana
The mere material world suggests to us no concepts of good
or evil, because we can discern in it no system of grades of
Value. WHITEHEAD
How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in
nature when nature herself is an effect? maistre
Nature hath no goal though she hath law. donne
Nature never breaks her own laws. Leonardo da vinci
What is a miracle? The natural law of a unique event.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. ingersoll
Nature is a hanging judge. anonymous
Men argue, nature acts. voltaire
Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.
SENECA
[ 99 ]
Nature
If the Sun & Moon should doubt
They'd immediately Go out.
BLAKE
The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago . . . had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ellis
If you go expressly to look at the moon, it becomes tinsel.
EMERSON
The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty. gourmont
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how
would men believe and adore! Emerson
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
EMERSON
Noon: Light is taking its riding lesson.
CHAZAL
Noon puts shadow to bed.
CHAZAL
The night has no bedroom; it sleeps anywhere. chazal
The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.
SWEDISH PROVERB
Noon one may keep as one will, but evening sets in on its own account. Swedish proverb
[ 100 ]
Nature
Light is half a companion.
GENOESE PROVERB
Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light. goethe
Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the
sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense
in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.
GOETHE
All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites. chazal
Water speaks in long syllables, air in short. chazal
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows. blake
Every mirror is false because it repeats something it has not
witnessed. chazal
A mirror has no heart but plenty of ideas. chazal
No scent is a virgin. chazal
Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.
LEG
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells.
Crying What I do is me: for that I came .
HOPKINS
[ 101 ]
Nature
How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse
from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we dis-
tinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the
bounding line and its infinite inflections and movements?
Leave out this line, and you leave out life itself; all is chaos
again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out upon
it before man or beast can exist. blake
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism
of the universe. whitehead
All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity,
effectiveness, and opacity: all that is done with life inclines
toward knowledge, abstraction, generality, transfiguration,
and transparency. goethe
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insuffi-
cient premises. SAMUEL BUTLER ( II )
All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the
part of every organism to live beyond its income.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Nature has wit, humor, fantasy, etc. Among animals and
plants one finds natural caricatures. Nature is at her wittiest
in the animal kingdom; there she is humorous throughout.
The mineral and vegetable kingdoms bear more the stamp
of fantasy: In the world of man, rational nature is bejeweled
with fantasy and wit. novalis
It is remarkable, that in the circumscription and complication of many leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds, nature affects a regular figure. ray
Nature
Heredity is nothing but stored environment. burbank
As we manure the flowerbeds, for the plants, so they manure
the air beds for us. novalis
Flowers have the glances of children and the mouths of old
men. chazal
The flower in the vase still smiles, but no longer laughs.
CHAZAL
Flowers are tolerant and cosmopolitan. Animals strive for individual lordship. novalis
Are not plants, perhaps, the product of a feminine nature
and a masculine spirit, animals the product of a masculine
nature and a feminine spirit? Are not plants, as it were, the
girls, animals the boys, of nature? novalis
We can divide animals into people with intelligence and
people with talent. The dog and the elephant are people
with intelligence; the nightingale and the silkworm, people
of talent, rivarol
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor
the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey. blake
No animal admires another animal.
PASCAL
Even a flea doesn’t jump merely for joy,
[1031
LEC
Nature
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been
the power of wandering. whitehead
Only the finest and most active animals are capable of bore- dom. A subject for a great poet — God's boredom on the seventh day of creation. nietzsche
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
All creatures obey the great game laws of nature and fish with nets of such meshes as permit many to escape and preclude the taking of many. Coleridge
Animal voices are only chinks in the silence. It is as though the animal were trying to tear open the silence with the force of its body. picard
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
BLAKE
It is only cold-blooded animals whose bite is poisonous.
SCHOPENHAUER
A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. thoreau
The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied
and contemplated by man. browne
Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey. chazal
Monkeys . . . very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they
should be set to earn their livings. grahame
[ 104 ]
Nature
The polar bear and the tiger cannot fight. freud
Swans have an air of being proud, stupid, and mischievous —
three qualities that go well together. diderot
To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should
we take him as an example? He is loyal to men, not to other
dogs. KRAUS
That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution. osler
Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way. bacon
If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings
as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture.
We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary
principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more atten-
tion to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's
discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we
sneak it from him, stealing what he may himself have heard
imperfectly, and add to it our own errors of spelling and
opinion. lichtenberg
It is a false dichotomy to think of nature and man. Mankind
is that factor in nature which exhibits in its most intense form
the plasticity of nature, whitehead
The reason why I prefer the society of nature to any other is that nature is always right and the error, if any, can only be on my side. But if I hold converse with men, they will err, then I will, and so on forever, and ,we never get to see matters clearly. goethe
[ 105 ]
Nature
Without my work in natural science I should never have
known human beings as they really are. In no other activity
can one come so close to direct perception and clear thought,
or realize so fully the errors of the senses, the mistakes of the
intellect, the weaknesses and greatnesses of human character.
GOETHE
We don't see words in nature but always only the initial letters of words, and when we set out to spell, we find that the so-called new words are in their turn merely the initial letters of others. lichtenberg
Only we who have erected the objectivity of a world of our
own from what nature gives us, who have built it into the
environment of nature so that we are protected from her,
can look upon nature as something “objective.” Without a
world between man and nature, there is eternal movement,
but no objectivity. hannah arendt
Whatever the word “secular” is made to signify in current
usage, historically it cannot be equated with worldliness.
Modern man, when he lost the certainty of a world to come,
was thrown back upon himself and not upon this world; far
from believing that the world might be potentially immortal,
he was not even sure that it was real. hannah arendt
Once the concept of infinity has been taken seriously, a
human dwelling can no longer be made of the universe. The
universe can still be thought but it can no longer be imaged;
the man who thinks it no longer really lives in it. buber
The father of geology was he who, seeing fossil shells on a
mountain, conceived the theory of the deluge.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 106 ]
Education
Education should be gentle and stem, not cold and lax.
JOUBERT
It is true that children pick up coarse expressions and bad manners in the company of servants; but in the drawing room they learn coarse ideas and bad feelings. herzen
I am always ... a great pedant with myself, and in the
world as little a pedant as possible. maistre
What boy well raised can compare with your street gamin
who has the knowledge and the shrewdness of a grown-up
broker. But the Arab never becomes a man. e. hubbard
Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot leam
too soon how children do not come into the world, kraus
Diogenes struck the father when the son swore. burton
Most young men, when going through an “artistic” stage,
find a guide and philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct
celebrity who lives by sponging on his young friends — an actor
[ 109 ]
Education
who has lost his voice, or an artist whose hand is beginning
to shake. Telemachus imitates his Mentor's pronunciation
and his drinks, and especially his contempt for social problems
and profound knowledge of gastronomy. herzen
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as
unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
O. W. HOLMES, JR.
The diploma gives society a phantom guarantee and its holders phantom rights. The holder of a diploma passes offi- cially for possessing knowledge . . . comes to believe that society owes him something. Never has a convention been created which is more unfortunate for every one — the state, the individual (and, in particular, culture). valery
The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to
esteem more highly those who think alike than those who
think differently. nietzsche
You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square
peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first
is only an indeterminate sentence. E. hubbard
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal
influence. alcott
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk
wOnderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
BAGEHOT
The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need
and a craving in the teacher himself. chapman
[ 110 ]
Education
The Koran is the educator’s ideal: its pages simultaneously
contain an example of writing, a model of style, a code of
religion, and a handbook of morals. gourmont
A true university can never rest upon the will of one man. A
true university always rests upon the wills of many divergent-
minded old gentlemen, who refuse to be disturbed, but who
growl in their kennels. chapman
The function of dons is to expound a few classic documents,
and to hand down as large and pleasant a store as possible of
academic habits, maxims, and anecdotes. Santayana
Nothing is so useless as a general maxim. macaulay
Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and
a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully in-
structed; and not an absolute resignation nor perpetual
captivity. bacon
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
BEERBOHM
“For example” is not proof.
YIDDISH PROBERB
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to
learn of the crow. blake
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
BERNARD
[ 111 ]
Education
Lessing's belief that he had read almost too much for his good
sense shows how good his sense really was. lichtenberg
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we
consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
HOFFER
Ideals travel upward, manners downward. bulwer-lytton
Reading means borrowing.
LICHTENBERG
The man of imagination and no culture has wings without
feet. JOUBERT
The cultivated often treat practical matters as the ignorant
do books, quite without understanding. joubert
Knowledge without sense is double folly. gracian
One must learn to think well before learning to think; after-
ward it proves too difficult. France
What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. Nietzsche
The school of necessity is kept by a violent mistress.
MONTAIGNE
The more a work is admired, the more beautiful it grows for the multitude. gourmont
[112]
Education
We live less and less and learn more and more. I have seen
a man laughed at for examining a dead leaf attentively and
with pleasure. No one would have laughed to hear a string
of botanical terms muttered over it. gourmont
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it pre-
scribes pills it may happen to do more harm.
GEORGE ELIOT
The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands
him. CHEKHOV
When I take up the end of the web, and find it pack-thread,
I do not expect by looking further to find embroidery.
DR. JOHNSON
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, be- cause they understand everything too soon. pope
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice,
when they will not so much as take warning? swift
Those who know the least obey the best. farquhar
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases
to be a subject of interest. hazlitt
Reformers are those who educate people to appreciate what
they need. e. hubbard
Civilized man's brain is a museum of contradictory truths.
gourmont
[ 113 ]
Education
Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than
little men's truths. nietzsche
It is as necessary, or rather more necessary, for most men to
know how to take mice, than how to take elephants.
TOPSEIX
Expect poison from the standing water. blake
He who desires but acts not, breds pestilence. blake
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted
desires. blake
The soul lives by avoiding what it dies by affecting.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
There is more than one way of sacrificing to the fallen angels.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds to destroy them.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
Love slays what we have been that we may be what we were not. SAINT AUGUSTINE
Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.
BRADLEY
He who knows how to be poor knows everything.
[ 114 ]
MICHELET
Education
To most men, experience is like the stem lights of a ship,
which illumine only the track it has passed. coleridge
Those who have endeavored to teach us to die well, have
taught few to die willingly. dr. Johnson
How people keep correcting us when we are young! There's
always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get
over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.
GOETHE
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you have done that they do not delight in vour company. dr. Johnson
In later life as in earlier, only a few persons influence the
formation of our character; the multitude pass us by like a
distant army. One friend, one teacher, one beloved, one club,
one dining table, one work table, are the means by which his
nation and the spirit of his nation affect the individual.
RICHTER
Our disciples never forgive us if we take sides against our- selves, for, in their eyes, this means not only that we have rejected their love but also exposed their judgment.
NIETZSCHE
Like Leporello, learned men keep a list, but the point is what they lack; while Don Juan seduces girls and enjoys himself, Leporello notes down the time, the place, and a description of the girl. Kierkegaard
The first book of Moses cites as one of the distinctive marks
of man: to give animals names. Now it is characteristic of the
[ 115 ]
Education
ordinary man, the man of the people, to have that gift. If the
ordinary man sees a bird for some years, which is not normally
seen, he immediately gives it a name, and a characteristic
name. But take ten learned men and how incapable they
are of finding a name. What a satire on them when one reads
scientific works and sees the names which come from the
people, and then the silly miserable names when once in a
while a learned man has to think of a name. Usually they
can think of nothing better than calling the animal or the
plant after their own names. Kierkegaard
[ 116 ]
The Drawing Room
To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to
seem established there already. la Rochefoucauld
I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst
of the company. swift
How convenient it would be to many of our great . . .
families of doubtful origin could they have the privilege of the
heroes of yore who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a
god. IRVING
Most noblemen call to mind their ancestors, the way a
cicerone in Italy recalls Cicero. chamfort
Good families are generally worse than any others. hope
The virtues of society are vices of the saint. emerson
The great with their long arms often do less damage than
their lackeys with short ones. ltchtenberg
[ 119 ]
Society
There are two large sections to society: those with more
dinners than appetite, those with more appetite than dinners.
CHAMFORT
The highest qualities often unfit a man for society. We don't
take ingots with us to market, we take silver or small change.
CHAMFORT
He . . . met every kind of person except the ordinary person.
He knew everybody, so to speak, except everybody.
CHESTERTON
The great, terrible, important powers of the world, like social caste and religious domination, always rest on secrets. A man is bom on the wrong side of the street and can therefore never enter into certain drawing rooms, even though he be in every way superior to everyone in those drawing rooms. When you try to find out what the difference is between him and the rest, and why he is accursed, you find that the reason is a secret. It is a secret that a certain kind of straw hat is damnable. Little boys know these things about other little boys. The world is written over with mysterious tramp- languages and symbols of Masonic hieroglyphics, chapman
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon
atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him; and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world.
SELDEN
r 1201
The Drawing Room
’Tis from high life high characters are drawn;
A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.
POPE
Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing be- havior of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.
PAVESE
Society is like sex in that no one knows what perversions it can develop once aesthetic considerations are allowed to dictate its choices. proust
Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui
of the higher ones. Schopenhauer
Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from
being satisfied with anything else. la bruyere
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses
of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
CHESTERFIELD
Men of letters are often criticized for not going out into society. . . . People expect them to be forever present at a lottery in which they hold no ticket. chamfort
Snobbery is a grave disease, but it is localized and so does not
utterly destroy the soul. proust
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be
able to find my way across the room. hazlitt
[ 121 ]
Society
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation
of rank than those who have no rank at all. . . . You will
find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality
of Brentford. shenstone
An aristocrat among hounds will snarl at beggars,
but then
Your true democratic lurcher snaps at
silk-stockinged men.
GOETHE
Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen. shaw
Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. Emerson
There are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad
manners organized. henry james
It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.
DOUGLAS
Society is like the air, necessary to breathe, but insufficient to live on. Santayana
Fortune rarely accompanies any one to the door. gracian
Punctuality is the thief of time.
WILDE
You can force anything upon society in the way of entertain-
ment except the consistent pursuit of a topic. goethe
[ 122 ]
The Drawing Room
Without discussion, intellectual experience is only an exercise
in a private gymnasium. bourne
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentle-
men. DR. JOHNSON
Constant popping off of proverbs will make thee a byword
thyself. DR. FULLER
Beware of telling an improbable truth. dr. fuller
That we seldom repent of talking too little and very often of
talking too much is a . . . maxim that everybody knows and
nobody practices. la bruyere
He who praises everybody praises nobody. dr. Johnson
Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody. collins
A flatterer must not lose his temper. Yiddish proverb
People not used to the world . . . are unskillful enough to
show what they have sense enough not to tell.
CHESTERFIELD
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
WILDE
Were it not for bunglers in the manner of doing it, hardly
any man would ever find out he was laughed at. Halifax
[ 123 ]
Society
If I blunder, everyone can notice it; not so, if I lie.
GOETHE
Who lies for you will lie against you. Bosnian proverb
The crudest lies are often told in silence. stevenson
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that every-
body guesses. shaw
A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have
-nothing told him. chesterfield
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. voltaire
We are almost always bored by just those whom we must
not find boring. la Rochefoucauld
There is no bore like a clever bore. Samuel butler (ii)
There is a freemasonry among the dull by which they recog-
nize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent
tact in men of genius. Emerson
The worst part of an emiment man's conversation is, nine
times out of ten, to be found in that part which he means
to be clever. bulwer-lytton
The most intolerable people are provincial celebrities.
CHEKHOV
[124]
The Drawing Room
Those who are contemptuous of everyone are more than
anyone terrified of contempt. l. p. smith
The greatest mistake is the trying to be more agreeable than
you can be. bagehot
A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.
GOETHE
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
CHESTERFIELD
If you will please people, you must please them in their own
way. CHESTERFIELD
The excessive desire of pleasing goes along almost always
with the apprehension of not being liked. dr. fuller
If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
HA2LITT
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not
quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of
person that keeps a parrot. mark twain
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable
he is. shaw
Where it is customary, the cow is put to bed.
SWISS proverb
[ 125 ]
Society
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of
vulgar people. coleridge
Barbarism and rusticity may perhaps be instructed, but false
refinement is incorrigible. hazlitt
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. shaw
Only God helps the badly dressed. Spanish proverb
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
SHAKESPEARE
Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken. hazlitt
Never whisper to the deaf or wink at the blind.
SLOVENIAN PROVERB
I always treat fools and coxcombs with great ceremony; true good breeding not being a sufficient barrier against them.
CHESTERFIELD
The three rudenesses of this world: youth mocking at age, health mocking at sickness, a wise man mocking a fool.
anonymous (tr. from Irish by T. Kinsella)
We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the luke-
warm approval of men of intelligence. vauvenargues
Savages are fops and fribbles more than any other men.
BLAKE
[ 126 ]
The Drawing Room
The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the
world is that it gives me the greater freedom of playing the
fool. POPE
A fool who has a brief flash of wit both shocks and amazes
us, like a cab horse at a gallop. chamfort
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and
often convincing. wilde
There is no such test of a man's superiority of character as
in the well-conducting of an unavoidable quarrel.
SIR HENRY TAYLOR
Many promising reconciliations have broken down because, while both parties came prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven. williams
Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual
approbation is particularly expected. dr. Johnson
A man who is sure to cause injuries to be done to him
wherever he goes is almost as great an evil and inconvenience
as if he were himself the wrongdoer. sir henry taylor
Mrs. Montagu has dropped me. Now, sir, there are people
whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish
to be dropped by. dr* Johnson
People count up the faults of those who are keeping them
waiting. french proverb
[ 127 ]
Society
If he really does think that there is no distinction between
virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our house, let us
count our spoons. dr. Johnson
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted
our spoons. Emerson
A guest sticks a nail in the wall even if he stays but one
night. POLISH PROVERB
Learn how to refuse favors. This is a great and very useful
art. dr. fuller
Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good
terms with yourself, it is an impertinence; if on bad, an injury.
SHAW
Our life is based upon the mutual interpenetration of play and earnest. So long as this happens, we live in peace. In a catastrophe the mixture is lacking, just as it is in the play of children. Catastrophe and child's play are the two poles of all social life. rosenstock-huessy
Civilized people have more time than they have life: idle
time gives birth to idle thoughts. rosenstock-huessy
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized. whitehead
Civilization, properly so called, might well be termed the organization of all those faculties that resist the mere excite- ment Of Sport. WILLIAM JAMES
[ 128 ]
The Drawing Room
The people I respect must behave as if they were immortal
and as if society were eternal. Both assumptions are false:
both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on
working and eating and loving, and are to keep open a few
breathing holes for the human spirit. forster
Between cultivated minds the first interview is the best.
EMERSON
All culture and art, and the best social order, are fruits of
unsocial impulses, which compel one another to discipline
themselves. kant
Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that con-
demns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses
it. CHESTERTON
On how many people's libraries, as on bottles from the drug-
store, one might write: “For external use only." daudet
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
L. P. SMITH
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. wilde
Gossip is none the less gossip because it comes from venerable
antiquity. bishop creighton
Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know anyone more
important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
SYDNEY SMITH
[ 129 ]
Society
No siren did ever so charm the ear of the listener as the
listening ear has charmed the soul of the siren.
SIR HENRY TAYLOR
If the commending others well, did not recommend ourselves, there would be few panegyrics. Halifax
He is not praised whose praiser deserveth not praise.
HARVEY
It is false praise of a man when we say of him, on his entry, that he is a very clever poet; and it is a bad sign when a man is not asked to give his judgment on some verses. pascal
Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before
people wherever they go. chesterfield
Who has once the fame to be an early riser may sleep till
noon. HOWELL
Fame is something which must be won; honor is something
which must not be lost. Schopenhauer
Glory: to become a literary theme, or a common noun, or an epithet. val£ry
The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he
is you. ANONYMOUS
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only
a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.
HALIFAX
[ 130 )
The Drawing Room
The delicious mixture of grace and gaucherie that touches the
heart and clings to the memory. sickert
In nothing do we lay ourselves so open as in our manner of meeting and salutation. lavater
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company
as to shun myself. dr. Johnson
By that time men are fit for company, they see the objections
to it. HALIFAX
One learns taciturnity best among people without it, and loquacity among the taciturn. richter
You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you
must share a joke with someone else. stevenson
When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel
they mean something else. wilde
Nothing seems to me so inane ’as bookish language in con-
versation. STENDHAL
When we talk in company we lose our unique tone of voice,
and this leads us to make statements which in no way corre-
spond to our real thoughts. Nietzsche
A nice person sits bodkin, never stops the bottle, always knows
the day of the month and the name of everybody at table.
SYDNEY SMITH
[1311
Society
Scoundrels are always sociable. Schopenhauer
Watch the faces of those who bow low. polish proverb
There is no feast without cruelty. nietzsche
There is no such thing as a feast “without gods” — whether it be a carnival or a marriage. pieper
A hotel isn't like home, but it's better than being a house guest. FEATHER
Everyone, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much by check more lightheartedly then he pays little in specie. beerbohm
There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
DR. JOHNSON
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
DR. JOHNSON
To praise princes for virtues they are lacking in is a way of insulting them with impunity. la Rochefoucauld
To address an abdicated monarch is a nice point of breeding.
To give him his lost titles is to mock him; to withhold 'em
is to wound him. lamb
To quicken the memory of past kindness thou hast done to
anyone is a very nice point to manage.
[ 132 ]
DR. FULLER
The Drawing Room
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. Emerson
Politeness ... is fictitious benevolence. dr. Johnson
What once were vices are now manners. seneca
He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it.
DR. JOHNSON
It is superstitious to put one's faith in conventions; but it is arrogant to be unwilling to submit to them. pascal
The lines of humanity and urbanity never coincide.
LICHTENBERG
People who have given us their complete confidence believe
that they have a right to ours. The inference is false: a gift
confers no rights. nietzsche
Certainly it is untrue that three is no company. Three is
splendid company. But if you reject the proverb altogether; if
you say that two and three are the same sort of company,
then you shall have no company either of two or three, but
shall be alone in a howling desert till you die.
CHESTERTON
Many get the name for being witty, only to lose the credit of being sensible. gracian
A wise man will live as much within his wit as his income.
CHESTERFIELD
Going away, I can generally bear the separation, but I don't like the leave-taking. samuel butler (ii)
Society
We're too unseparate. And going home
From company means coming to our senses.
FROST
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
SCHOPENHAUER
There is hardly any man so strict as not to vary a little from
truth when he is to make an excuse. Halifax
It is never any good dwelling on good-bys. It is not the being
together that it prolongs, it is the parting.
ELIZABETH BIBESCO
The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for a day; and
a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may
end only with our lives. hazlitt
The Market Place
Everybody is a bit right; nobody is completely right or com-
pletely wrong. The prevalence of this point of view among
all decent people nearly always has the same dreadful result
for, according to their doctrine, every time a contemporary is
quite right, he must be crucified. They can never forgive him
because he denies their dogma; worse still, he reveals that
they hold another dogma which they conceal. The unavowed
dogma of these diffusionists runs as follows. The truth is
[ 134 ]
The Market Place
everywhere and nowhere; it evolves itself without anyone
knowing it, as if, in the end, Judas is just as right as Jesus.
One can read that Jesus incited Judas, according to the
maxim: “It is not the murderer but his victim who is guilty.”
Judas and Jesus must be “synthesized”; both are “only” hu-
man: all men are swine. rosenstock-huessy
City air makes free.
ANONYMOUS
In the city, time becomes visible.
MUMFORD
We do not worry about being respected in the towns through
which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a
certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
PASCAL
The little stations are very proud because the expresses have to pass them by. kraus
So much are the modes of excellence settled by time and
place, that men may be heard boasting in one street of that
which they would anxiously conceal in another.
DR. JOHNSON
No place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable. george moore
As a rule, people who read much in the street don't read
much at home. lichtenberg
Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.
GEORGE ELIOT
[ 135 ]
Society
There is something which has never been seen yet, and which,
to all appearances, never will be, and that is a little town
which isn’t divided into cliques, where the families are united,
and the cousins trust each other; where a marriage doesn’t
start a civil war, and where quarrels about precedence don’t
arise every time a service, a ceremony, a procession, or a
funeral are held; where gossip and lying and malice have been
outlawed; where the landlord and the corporation are on
speaking terms, or the ratepayers and their assessors; where
the dean is friendly with the canons, and the canons don’t
despise the chaplins, and the chaplins tolerate the men in the
Choir. LA BRUYERE
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
BACON
The tyrant and the mob, the grandfather and the grandchild, are natural allies. Schopenhauer
A university does great things, but there is one thing it does
not do: it does not intellectualize its neighborhood.
NEWMAN
Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: ‘This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn’t be on the street!”
This judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home.
The point of both the testimonial banquet and the social life of city street walks is precisely that they are public. They
[ 136 ]
The Market Place
bring together people who do not know each other in an
intimate, pm ate social fashion, and in most cases do not
care to know each other in that fashion.
Nobody can keep open house in a great city. Nobod\ wants to. And \et if interesting, useful, and significant contacts among the people of cities are confined to acquaintanceships suitable for pri\ate life, the city becomes stultified. Cities are full of people with whom a certain degree of contact is useful and enjoyable, but you do not want them in your hair. And they do not want you in theirs either. jane Jacobs
There exist labor songs, but no work songs. The songs of the
craftsman are social; they are sung after work.
HANNAH ARENDT
The beginning of error may be, and mostly is, from private
persons, but the maintainer and continuer of error is the
multitude. hales
When are men most useless, would you say?
When they can't command and can't obey.
GOETHE
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter, second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is un- pleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
RUSSELL
To get an idea of our fellow countrymen's miseries, we have
only to take a look at their pleasures. george eliot
From someone else's cart you have to get off halfway.
POLISH PROVERB
[ 137 ]
Society
The young can bear solitude better than the old, for their
passions occupy their thoughts. la bruyere
One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
STENDHAL
Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. dr. johnson
Men that cannot entertain themselves want somebody, though
they care for nobody. Halifax
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. Santayana
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
LA BRUYERE
Better be quarreling than lonesome. Irish proverb
Consolation, for the condemned, is to be one of many.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Crowds are comforting to those who are physically dissatisfied with themselves. chazal
There are people whose position in life is that of the inter-
jection, without influence on the sentence — they are the
hermits of life, and at the very most take a case, e.g., Of me
miserum. Kierkegaard
[ 138 ]
The Market Place
Fresh air and innocence are good if you don’t take too much
of them — but I always remember that most of the achieve-
ments and pleasures of life are in bad air. o. w. holmes, jr.
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect
strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself;
the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an
uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a mustache. Chesterton
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what
the neighbors will say. connolly
Each social class has its own pathology. proust
Society is a sort of organism on the growth of which con-
scious efforts can exercise little effect. marx
The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.
SHAW
Man is constrained to be more or less social by his mode of propagation. Santayana
Man seeks to acquire a rank among his fellow men, whom he
detests, but without whom he cannot live. rant
A man that should call everything by its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy. Halifax
The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its
folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.
t. h. HUXLEY
[ 139 ]
Society
In a tavern everybody puts on airs except the landlord.
EMERSON
When we cast off the yolce of public opinion, it is seldom to rise above it, but almost always to fall below. chamfort
Men carry their character not seldom in their pockets: you
might decide on more than half of your acquaintance, had
you will or right to turn their pockets inside out. lavater
So long as there is any subject which men may not freely
discuss, they are timid upon all subjects. chapman
I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
COLERIDGE
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts.
MENCKEN
No one looks at the blazing sun; all do when it is eclipsed.
gracian
Humanity is composed but of two categories, the invalids and the nurses. sickert
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. mark twain
It is a good thing Heaven has not given us the power to
alter our bodies as much as we would like to and as much
as our theories might happen to require. One man would
cover himself with eyes, another with sexual organs, a third
with ears, etc. lichtenberg
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do
unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. shaw
[ 140 ]
The Market Place
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal
relations. russell
Perhaps e\ery man is at heart a log-roller. sickert
People may come to do anything almost, by talking of it.
DR. JOHNSON
In quarreling, the truth is always lost. publilius syrus
Most people are good only so long as they believe others to
be SO. HEBBEL
In relation to each other men are like irregular verbs in dif-
ferent languages; nearly all verbs are slightly irregular.
KIERKEGAARD
Cut off from the worship of the divine, leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman. pieper
There can be no such thing in the world of total labor as
space which is not used on principle , no such thing as a plot
of ground or a period of time withdrawn from use. pieper
I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity, from
the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind,
midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different
degrees: education leaving them pretty nearly as it found
them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction
to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry-neck to the thing
they call understanding. So one nose points always east, an-
other always west, and each is ready to swear that it points
due north. peacock
[HI]
Society
That which everybody guards will soon disappear.
POLISH PROVERB
Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another, nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. tocqueville
Truly decent people only exist among men with definite con-
victions, whether conservative or radical; so-called moderates
are much drawn to rewards, orders, commissions, promotions.
CHEKHOV
Nations are like men; they love that which flatters their passions even more than that which serves their interests.
TOCQUEVILLE
The principle of self-interest rightly understood produces no great acts of self-sacrifice, but it suggests daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of persons in habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and, if it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their habits. Observe some few individuals, they are lowered by it; survey mankind, it is raised. tocqueville
All essential production is for the mouth; and is finally measured by the mouth. The want of any clear insight of this fact is the capital error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of error among the political economists. Their minds are continually set on money gain, not on mouth gain.
RUSKIN
Every society rests on the death of men. o. w. holmes, jr.
Divided duties are seldom split in the middle.
[ 142 ]
HASKINS
The Market Place
Cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most
extravagant bigotry are in constant occurrence among us
every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder
and astonishment at the chief actors, therein setting at de-
fiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is
no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the
opinion of their own little world that such things take place
at all, and strike the great world dumb with astonishment,
DICKENS
The universal demand for happiness and the widespread un-
happiness in our society (and these are but two sides of the
same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we
have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough
laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal laborans,
and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever
demanded to be “happy” or thought that mortal man could
be happy. hannah arendt
In the “social order” one is the worker, and nine are idlers.
ROZINOV
Seek to oppress [men] and it is sometimes a proof of regarding
them with esteem; depreciate their customs, it is always a
mark of contempt. Montesquieu
Not sixteen per cent of the human race is, or ever has been,
engaged in any of the kinds of activity at which they excel.
MAIRET
The difference between a slave and a citizen is that a slave is subject to his master and a citizen to the laws. It may happen that the master is very gentle and the laws very harsh: that changes nothing. Everything lies in the distance between caprice and rule. simone weil
[ 143 ]
Society
Servitude degrades men even to making them love it.
VAUVENARGUES
It has always been true that the men who were defending
Western ideals were bound to be in alliance with men who
intended to defend only Western interests. Butterfield
The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is
archaism in morals. To be so preoccupied with vitality is a
symptom of anemia. Santayana
With the peasant, general custom holds the place of indi- vidual feeling. riehl
The temptations of the wilderness are those of the flesh;
the temptations of civilization those of the mind.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
What is culture? To know what concerns one, and to know what it concerns one to know. Hofmannsthal
When one despairs of any form of life, the first solution
which always occurs, as though by a mechanically dialectic
impulse of the human mind, the most obvious, the simplest,
is to turn all values inside out. If wealth does not give hap-
piness, poverty will; if learning does not solve everything,
then true wisdom will lie in ignorance. ortega y gasset
Belief in progress is a doctrine of idlers and Belgians. It is the individual relying upon his neighbors to do his work.
BAUDELAIRE
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second, hand.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 144 ]
The Market Place
Rome owed much of her patriotism to her many festivals.
RICHTER
One got the impression that the intellectual life of the country [England] was “hobbyized,” that ideas were taken as sports, just as sports were taken as serious issues, bourne
If we tried to say that what governs [the Englishman] is
convention, we should have to ask . . . where else would
a man inform you, with a sort of proud challenge, that he
lived on nuts, or was in correspondence through a medium
with Sir Joshua Reynolds, or had been disgustingly housed
when last in prison. Santayana
Civilization aims at making all good things . . . accessible
even to cowards. nietzsche
Perhaps, for worldly success, we need virtues that make us
loved and faults that make us feared. joubert
Men are more ready to offend one who desires to be beloved
than one who wishes to be feared. machiavelli
Men are never attached to you by favors. napoleon
“Forgive us our virtues.” That is what we should ask of our
neighbors. nietzsche
It is on seldom frequented paths that one risks meeting ugly
characters. The rule does not apply to the path of virtue.
anonymous
[ 145 ]
Society
Virtue, as such, naturally procures considerable advantages
to the virtuous. Joseph butler
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
SHENSTONE
Innocence itself sometimes hath need of a mask.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Integrity is praised and starves. juvenal
I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe
it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.
E. HUBBARD
I have found men more kind than I expected, and less just.
DR. JOHNSON
If you're naturally kind you attract a lot of people you don't
like. FEATHER
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares
nothing. wilde
Such is a very good man's face that people think him a
detective. chekhov
In the world a man will often be reputed to be a man of
sense, only because he is not a man of talent.
SIR HENRY TAYLOR
There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible. lichtenberg
[ 146 ]
The Market Place
Those who are fond of setting things to rights have no great
objection to seeing them wrong. hazlitt
You will not become a saint through other people's sins.
CHEKHOV
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. thomas fuller
Protest long enough that you are right, and you will be wrong.
YIDDISH PROVERB
Every hero becomes a bore at last. Emerson
Nothing is truer in a sense than a funeral oration: it tells precisely what the dead man should have been.
VAPEREAU
Nothing is more original, more oneself than to be nourished by others; only one must be able to digest them. valery
It is very disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be. chesterfield
One must judge men, not by their opinions, but by what
their opinions have made of them. lichtenberg
Those who come first are the heirs of Fame; the others get only a younger brother's allowance. gracian
Fame is the beginning of the fall of greatness.
[ 147 ]
ROZINOV
Society
In this age, when it is said of a man. He knows how to live,
it may be implied he is not very honest. Halifax
There is a cunning . . . which is, when that which a man
says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him.
BACON
The lie is a condition of life. nietzsche
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and
ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
SHENSTONE
Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don't.
ANONYMOUS
Gravity is of the very essence of imposture. Shaftesbury
A really accomplished impostor is the most wretched of
geniuses: he is a Napoleon on a desert island. Chesterton
Knaves have always a certain need of their honor, somewhat
as police spies are paid less when they move in less good
company. chamfort
In baiting a mouse trap with cheese, always leave room for
the mouse. saki
Charlatans are generally sublime.
rozinov
He who fondles you more than usual has either deceived you
or wants to do so. french proverb
[ 148 ]
The Market Place
There are some occasions when a man must tell half his
secret, in order to conceal the rest. chesterfield
It is usually where but little is involved that we gamble on
not trusting to appearances. la Rochefoucauld
Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each
other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.
PROUST
He who cannot love must learn to flatter. goeiiie
A flatterer doesn't sufficiently value either himself or others.
la bruylre
He who greatly excels in beauty, strength, birth, or wealth, and he, on the other hand, who is very poor, or very weak, or very disgraced, find it difficult to follow rational principles. Of these two, the one sort grows into violent and great criminals, the other into rogues and petty rascals.
ARISTOTLE
When you find three young cads and idiots going about
together and getting drunk together every day, you generally
find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraor-
dinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. Chesterton
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will
avoid you. blake
Cursing, swearing, reviling, and the like do not signify as
speech but as the actions of a tongue accustomed. hobbes
[1491
Society
Take care how thou offendest men raised from low condition.
THOMAS FULLER
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
WILDE
Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.
BILLINGS
To imitate one's enemy is to dishonor. hobbes
It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is un- bearable to be indebted to a scoundrel. la Rochefoucauld
Nothing knits man to man like the frequent passage from
hand to hand of cash. sickert
As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it.
DISRAELI
Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intel- lectually, the second effectively. simone weil
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice
how he acts when he loses money. new England proverb
The Lord forbid that I should be out of debt, as if indeed I
could not be trusted. rabelais
Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent.
[ 150 ]
FROST
The Market Place
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was prov’d true before Prov’d false again? Two hundred more.
SAMUEL BUTLER (i)
When a poor man eats a chicken, one or the other is sick.
YIDDISH PROVERB
An ox for a penny — and if you haven’t a penny?
YIDDISH PROVERB
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live. wilde
There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though
none in particular are ill natured. Halifax
A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious. For envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep at home. bacon
Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
KIN HUBBARD
Societies for the suppression of vice Beginning with the best intentions in the world, such so- cieties must in all probability degenerate into a receptacle for every species of tittle-tattle, impertinence and malice. Men whose trade is rat-catching love to catch rats; the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. The last soon becomes a mere tradesman like the others; none of them moralize, or lament that their respective evils should exist in the world. The public feeling is swallowed up in the pursuit of a daily occupation, and in the display of a technical skill. Sydney smith
[ 151 ]
Society
All else failing, a man's character may be inferred from nothing
so surely as the jest he takes in bad part. lichtenberg
Thousands are hated, but none is ever loved without a real
cause. LAVATER
What encourages the mocker is that he starts off with success;
the punishment comes later. marbeau
When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterward
continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony,
as men do to a whore. swift
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you
are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.
NIETZSCHE
Calumny is like counterfeit money: many people who would not coin it circulate it without qualms, diane de poitiers
More men hurt others they do not know why than for any
reason. Halifax
There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend
sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
BULWER-LYTTON
Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own. la Rochefoucauld
If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves, shaw
[ 152 ]
The Market Place
We are much harder on people who betray us in small ways
than on people who betray others in great ones.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Many a friend will tell us our faults without reserve, who will not so much as hint at our follies. chesterfield
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly
is to fill the world with fools. spencer
Severities should be dealt out all at once, that by their
suddenness they may give less offense; benefits should be
handed out drop by drop, that they may be relished the more.
machiavelli
If others had not been foolish, we should be so. blake
The embarrassment we feel in the presence of a ridiculous
man is due to the fact that we cannot imagine him on his
death bed. cioran
The faults that make a man absurd seldom make him hateful;
he escapes loathing through ridicule. joubert
Two protecting deities, indeed, like two sober friends sup-
porting a drunkard, flank human folly and keep it within
bounds. One of these deities is Punishment and the other
Agreement. Santayana
I can understand anyone’s allowing himself to be bullied by
the living, but not, if he* can help it, by the dead.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 153 ]
Society
The secret of prosperity in common life is to be common-
place on principle. bagehot
It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and
less sensitive than they seem. hoffer
He that is never suspected is either very much esteemed
or very much despised. Halifax
Could we know what men are most apt to remember, we
might know what they are most apt to do. Halifax
There are some splenetic gentlemen who confine their favor-
able opinion within so narrow a compass that they will not
allow it to any man that was not hanged in the late reigns.
HALIFAX
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. dr. Johnson
To understand the world, and to like it, are two things not
easily to be reconciled. Halifax
Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds — habit
and novelty. la bruyere
It is a luxury to be understood.
EMERSON
The world may not be particularly wise — still we know of
nothing wiser. samuel butler ( n )
[ 154 ]
The Market Place
A wise man knows everything; a shrewd one, everybody.
ANONYMOUS
It is one thing to understand persons, and another thing to
understand matters: for many are perfect in men’s humors,
that are not greatly capable of the real part of the business.
BACON
Most of the grounds of the world’s troubles are matters of grammar. montaigne
One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures
without making a mistake. chekhov
There is none can baffle men of sense but fools, on whom
they can make no impression. shenstone
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight
acquaintance and without any visible reason, chesterfield
The most useful part of wisdom is for a man to give a good
guess, what others think of him. It is a dangerous thing to
guess partially, and a melancholy thing to guess right.
HALIFAX
The pleasantest condition of life is in incognito. cowley
Love your neighbor, but don’t pull down the hedge.
SWISS PROVERB
I prefer the sign “No Entry” to the one that says “No Exit.”
LEC
[ 155 ]
Society
He who deserts us may not be insulting us, but he is cer-
tainly insulting our disciples. nietzsche
Three things we should keep in mind [in conversation] : first,
that we speak in the presence of people as vain as ourselves,
whose vanity suffers in proportion as ours is satisfied; second,
that there are few truths important enough to justify paining
and reproving others for not knowing them; finally, that any
man who monopolizes the conversation is a fool or would be
fortunate if he were one. Montesquieu
Let us leave . . . labels to those who have little else wherer
with to cover their nakedness. sickert
Lessons are not given, they are taken. pavese
For the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital, and a
place not to live but to die in. browne
We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles. chamfort
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one
big thing. Archilochus
From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. samuel butler (ii)
He who has suffered you to impose on him, knows you.
BLAKE
To take upon oneself not punishment, but guilt — that alone would be godlike. nietzsche
[ 156 ]
The Arena
All rising to great place is by a winding stair. bacon
Ambition hath no mean, it is either upon all fours or upon
tiptoes. HALIFAX
Courtiers speak well of a man for two reasons: that he may
learn they have spoken well of him, and that he may speak
well of them. la bruyere
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the
knaves would not have enough to live upon.
SAMUEL BUTLER (i)
To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear. lichtenberg
Truth is the safest lie.
YIDDISH PROVERB
In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their
ends to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little
to them, and that which they least look for. bacon
There is little or nothing to be remembered written oh the
subject of getting an honest living. Neither the New Testa-
ment nor Poor Richard speaks to our condition. One would
think, from looking at literature, that this question had
never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. thoreau
[H7]
Society
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing
the means he uses to frighten you. hoffer
Timing of the suit is the principal: timing, I say, not only
in respect of the person that should grant it, but in respect
of those which are likely to cross it. bacon
How rightly do we distinguish men by external differences
rather than by internal qualities. Which of us two shall have
precedence? Who will give place to the other? The least
clever? But I am as clever as he. We should have to fight
over this. He has four lackeys, and I have only one. This
can be seen; we have only to count. It falls to me to yield,
and I am a fool if I contest the matter. pascal
Thou shalt not kill; but need not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
CLOUGH
When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned. chesterfield
He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a
great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that
plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a
whole age. bacon
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and
they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn
the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity
strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
HOFrER
[ 158 ]
The Arena
He who can lick can bite.
FRENCH PROVERB
It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are
not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are
required. goncharov
Disgrace kills hatred and jealousy. Once someone is no longer
a favorite and no longer envied ... he might even be a
hero and not annoy us. la bruyere
Great evils befall the world when the powerful begin to
copy the weak. The desperate devices which enable the weak
to survive are unequaled instruments of oppression and ex-
termination in the hands of the strong. hoffer
With someone who holds nothing but trumps, it is impos-
sible to play cards. hebbel
Manifest merits procure reputation; occult ones, fortune.
BACON
There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced — of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.
BAUDELAIRE
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgments — success. E. BURKE
The art of controversy: if your opponent proposes an altera-
tion, you can call it an innovation . If you are making the
proposal, it will be the other way round. Schopenhauer
[ 159 ]
Society
To take away all animosity from a rivalry is like playing
whist for love. samuel butler (ii)
There is nothing so common as to imitate the practice of
enemies and to use their weapons. voltaire
The pain of a dispute greatly outweighs its uses. joubert
One has not the right to betray even a traitor. Traitors must
be fought, not betrayed. peguy
Irrational creatures cannot distinguish between injury and
damage , and therefore, as long as they be at ease, they are
not offended with their fellows; whereas man is then most
troublesome when he is most at ease, for then it is that he
loves to show his wisdom and control the actions of them
that govern the commonwealth. hobbes
The innocent victim who suffers knows the truth about his
executioner; the executioner does not know it. The evil which
the innocent victim feels in himself is in his executioner,
but the latter is not sensible of the fact. The innocent victim
can only know the evil in the form of suffering. That which
is not felt by the criminal is his crime. That which is not
felt by the innocent victim is his own innocence.
SIMONE WEIL
Calumnies are answered best with silence. jonson
Even in a declaration of war one observes the
ness.
rules of polite-
BISMARCK
[ 160 ]
The Arena
Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.
CLOUGH
If a man would cross a business that he doubts some other would handsomely and effectively move, let him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort as may
foil it. BACON
A long table and a square table, or seats about the walls,
seem things of form but are things of substance: for at a
long table, a few at the upper end in effect sway all the
business; but in the other form, there is more use of the
counselors" opinions that sit lower. bacon
“This dog belongs to me,” said these poor children; “that
is my place in the sun.” There is the beginning and image
of the usurpation of all the earth. pascal
Great riches have sold more men than they have bought,
BACON
To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave the way the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober. l. p. smith
The aristocracy created by business rarely settles in the midst
of the manufacturing population which it directs; the object
is not to govern that population, but to use it.
TOCQUEVILLE
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
BAUDELAIRE
[ 161 ]
Society
Money swore an oath that nobody that did not love it should
ever have it. irish proverb
The best condition in life is not to be so rich as to be envied
nor so poor as to be damned. billings
We do not learn to know men through their coming to us.
To find out what sort of persons they are, we must go to
them. goethe
It’s always been and always will be the same in the world:
the horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.
ANONYMOUS
If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living. Yiddish proverb
The bourgeoisie began to treat the work of man as a security
on the stock exchange; so, in his turn, the worker began to
treat his own work as a security on the stock exchange. The
political socialist party is entirely composed of intellectual
bourgeois. It is they who invented the double desertion,
desertion from work and desertion from tools. p£guy
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their
misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
GEORGE ELIOT
Rich man down and poor man up — they are still not even.
YIDDISH PROVERB
should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them. Nietzsche
[ 162 ]
The Arena
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance
can almost serve as a substitute for hope; and it not infre-
quently happens that those who hunger for hope give their
allegiance to him who offers them a grievance. hoffer
Poverty is to be pitied, but impoverishment is a hundred
times more pitiable. richter
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to
make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
BAGEHOT
The poor are the Negroes of Europe. chamfort
Those who escape from destitution do not escape from the
memory of their destitution. Either by dwelling upon it or
by reacting against it, all their future life is affected by it.
The majority of the once destitute take refuge in voluntary
amnesia. p£guy
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. Chesterton
Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty.
FiGUY
Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state
of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
COBBETT
To ruin those who possess something is not to come to the aid of those who possess nothing; it is merely to render misery general. metternich
[ 163 ]
The Sexes
Women prefer to talk in two's; while men prefer to talk
in three's. Chesterton
Men's vows are women's traitors. Shakespeare
Women eat while they talk, men talk while they eat. At
table, men talk for a long time between mouthfuls, women
while eating. At breakfast, when the courses are light and
hurried, women preside; at banquets and formal dinners
when the intervals between courses are long, the voices of
the men are predominant. chazal
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become
victims to women who make advances to them. bagehot
In mixed company, women practice a sort of visual shorthand,
which, later, they will laboriously and at great length decode
in the company of other women. chazal
A woman knows how to keep quiet when she is in the right,
whereas a man, when he is in the right, will keep on talking
CHAZAI
[ 167 ]
The Sexes
f
The great question that has never been answered, and which
I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years
of research into the feminine soul, is: What does a woman
want? fReud
If a man hears much that a woman says, she is not beautiful.
HASKINS
Most men who rail against women are railing at one woman only. GOURMONT
There is one phase of life that I have never heard
discussed in any seminar
And that is that all women think men are funny and all men think that weminar.
NASH
'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel. thackeray
Women do not properly understand that when an idea fills
and elevates a man’s mind it shuts out love and crowds out
people. RICHTER
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but
for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical
antipathy. nietzsche
One can, to an almost laughable degree, infer what a man's
wife is like from his opinions about women in general.
MILL
A woman is more responsive to a man's forgetfulness than to his attentions. janin
[ 168 ]
The Sexes
Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic to an epigram.
KRAUS
Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with [them]. addison
A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even think- ing of reproducing her own sex. goethe
The woman possesses a theatrical exterior and a circumspect interior, while in the man it is the interior which is theatrical. The woman goes to the theater; the man carries it inside himself and is the impresario of his own life.
ORETGA Y GASSET
The best man for a man and the best man for a woman are not the same. ortega y gasset
Men are men, but Man is a woman. Chesterton
Men are so made that they can resist sound argument, and yet yield to a glance. balzac
Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. bulwer-lytton
All the books extolling the simple life are written by men.
feather
Chaste men engender obscene literatures.
[ 169 ]
AUSONIUS
The Sexes
Female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage. siiaw
The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost.
They are added to other women's. diane de poitiers
The fundamental fault of the female character is that it has
no sense of justice. Schopenhauer
Even when they meet in the street, women look at one
another like Guelphs and Ghibellines. Schopenhauer
Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop
to the strong, and no man ever has what he should.
PAVESE
Next to the wound, what women make best is the bandage.
BARBEY D'AUREVILLY
Women are the wild life of a country: morality corresponds to game laws. anonymous
Women are always afraid of things which have to be divided.
BALZAC
Most women are not so young as they are painted.
BEERBOHM
A beautiful and sparkling, but superficial woman rules a wide circle; a woman of real culture a small one. goethe
Can -you recall a woman who ever showed you with pride
her library? de casseres
[ 170 ]
The Sexes
\\ oman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from
achieving them. dumas
What is truly indispensable for the conduct of life has been
taught us by women — the small rules of courtesy, the actions
that win us the warmth or deference of others; the words
that assure us a welcome; the attitudes that must be varied
to mesh with character or situation; all social strategy. It is
listening to women that teaches us to speak to men.
GOURMONT
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. kraus
Women always show more taste in their choice of under- clothing than in their choice of jewelry. chazal
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of
the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed
gives a feeling of inward tranquillity, which religion is power-
less tO bestOW. EMERSON
Women who are either indisputably beautiful or indisputably ugly are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
CHESTERFIELD
A beautiful woman should break her minor early, gracian
The marvelous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say that it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intui- tion of men and the want of it in women. ada leverson
[ 171 ]
The Sexes
You don't know a woman until you have had a letter from
her. ADA LEVERSON
A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is com-
monly the more careless about her house. jonson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. dr. Johnson
The woman whose behavior indicates that she will make a
scene if she is told the truth asks to be deccncd.
ELIZABETH JENKINS
I have met with women whom I really think would like to
be married to a poem, and to be given away by a no\ cl.
KEATS
The females of all species are most dangerous when they
appear to retreat. marquis
Woman learns how to hate in the degree that she forgets how to charm. nietzsche
When women kiss it always reminds one of prizefighters
shaking hands. mencken
With women all ideas easily become human beings.
RICHTER
To tell a woman what she may not do is to tell her what she can. Spanish proverb
[ 172 ]
The Sexes
A small woman always seems newly married.
GENOESE PROVERB
There is but an hour a day between a good housewife and a bad one. English proverb
For women, history does not exist. Murasalci, Sappho, and
Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries. Yet
fashion exists for them. Is it a trick they have, or some great
talent, that enables them to appear at any moment exactly
as fashion decrees? pavese
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It obviates the
crude requirements of polygamy. If >ou have one good wife
you are sure to have a spiritual harem. Chesterton
A man keeps another's secret better than he does his own.
A woman, on the other hand, keeps her own better than
another's. la bruyere
The two things that a healthy person hates most between
heaven and hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man
who is. CHESTERTON
Men are cleverer than women at reasoning, women are
cleverer than men at drawing conclusions. A parliament in
which the members were predominantly women would get
through its legislation much faster. chazal
It is a mistake for a taciturn, serious-minded woman to marry
a jovial man, but not for a serious-minded man to marry a
lighthearted woman. goethe
[ 173 ]
The Sexes
In contrast to the concentric structure of the feminine mind,
there are always epicenters in that of the man. The more
masculine, in a spiritual sense, a man is, the more his mind
is disjointed in separate compartments. ortega y gasset
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire
is rarely other than for the desire of the man. coleridge
I should like to know what is the proper function of women,
if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home,
and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
GEORGE ELIOT
In Paris, when God provides a beautiful woman, the devil at once retorts with a fool to keep her. barbey d’aurevilly
As the faculty of writing has been chiefly a masculine endow- ment, the reproach of making the world miserable has been always thrown upon the women. dr. Johnson
When the husband drinks to the wife, all would be well; when
the wife drinks to the husband, all is. English proverb
When men watch them, nursemaids kiss and rock children
with vigor; when only women are looking on, they handle
them very quietly. lichtenberg
In woman the seat of the point d’honneur coincides with
the center of gravity; in man it is located higher, in the
chest near the diaphragm. Hence, in man, the buoyant full-
ness in that region when he embarks on splendid deeds, and
the flabby emptiness when he embarks on petty ones.
lichtenberg
[ 174 ]
The Sexes
The wife carries the husband on her face; the husband car-
ries the wife on his linen. Bulgarian proverb
Women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and beating about,
hanging upon and keeping up and reluctantly letting fall,
any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of
the same class and rank. coleridge
Woman's vanity demands that a man be more than a happy
husband. nietzsche
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses
possessing the . . . power of reflecting the figure of man
at twice its natural size. Virginia woolf
Men always want to be a woman's first love, women like to
be a man's last romance. wilde
It is because of men that women dislike one another.
LA BRUYERE
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. wilde
[ 175 ]
(°)
LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND FRIENDSHIP
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
The lover thinks oftener of reaching his mistress than does
the husband of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks oftener
of escaping than does the jailer of shutting the door.
STENDHAL
Love is imminent in nature, but not incarnate. garnett
Hail Sovereign Queen of secrets, who has power
To call the fiercest Tyrant from his rage:
And weep unto a girl; that hast the might Even with an eye-glance, to cloak Marsis Drum And turn th'allarm to whispers, that canst make A Cripple flourish with his Crutch, and cure him Before Apollo; that may’st force the King To be his subjects' vassal, and induce Stale gravity to daunce.
SHAKESPEARE
eros: As his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first
place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair,
as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and
has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth
exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at
the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother
(Poverty) he is always in distress. Like his father ( Plenty )
[ 179 ]
Love , Marriage , and Friendship
too , whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting
against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a
mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen
in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher
at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is
by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourish-
ing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at an-
other moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature.
PLATO
Cupid: his disgrace is to be called boy; but his glory is to subdue men. Shakespeare
For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice
of life; for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.
GOETHE
Love is either the shrinking remnant of something which was once enormous; or else it is part of something which will grow in the future into something enormous. But in the present it does not satisfy. It gives much less than one expects.
CHEKHOV
LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites. fielding
Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves a dark house
and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not
so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that
the whippers are in love too. Shakespeare
Love between the sexes is a sin in theology, a forbidden inter-
course in jurisprudence, a mechanical insult in medicine, and
a subject philosophy has no time for.
[ 180 ]
KRAUS
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
Love: that self-love a deux .
MME. DE STAEL
Coition is a slight attack of apoplexy.
DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA
What they call “heart" is located far lower than the fourth waistcoat button. lichtenberg
You can construct a totalitarian goodness. But don't play the fool: keep sex out of it. pavese
Sexuality throws no light upon love, but only through love
can we learn to understand sexuality. rosenstock-huessy
A taste for dirty stories may be said to be inherent in the
human animal. george moore
When the representatives of the Church have talked about such things as sexual love (to take one example) they may have said the right things, but they said very few of them and they have generally said them in the wrong style. The great world and energy of the body have been either deprecated or devotionalized; and by devotionalized I mean turned into a pale imitation of “substance," of spirit; thus losing their own powers and privileges without, in general, gaining any others. There has been a wide feeling that the more like an indeterminate soul the body can be, the better. But the body is not “like" the soul; it is like nothing but itself.
WILLIAMS
Nine-tenths of that which is attributed to sexuality is the work of our magnificent ability to imagine, which is no longer an instinct, but exactly the opposite: a creation.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
[ 181 ]
Love, Marriage , and Friendship
Were it not for imagination, sir, a man would be as happy
in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
DR. JOHNSON
The credulity of love is the most fundamental source of authority. freud
There is nothing like desire for preventing the things we say
from having any resemblance to the things in our minds.
PROUST
Passion often turns the cleverest men into idiots and makes the greatest blockheads clever. la Rochefoucauld
When we are in love, we often doubt what we most believe.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extin- guished, the moment it is displayed in public.
HANNAH ARENDT
No disguise can long conceal love where it exists, or long feign it where it is lacking. la Rochefoucauld
Only with those we love do we speak of those we love.
RICHTER
Love does not dominate; it cultivates. goethe
Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.
RICHTER
A ’gentleman in love may behave like a madman but not like a dunce. la Rochefoucauld
[ 182 ]
Love, Marriage, 2nd Friendship
The impassioned man hasn't time to be witty. stendhal
Love is a talkative passion.
BISHOP WILSON
The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing
but in love. bacon
Habit is everything — even in love. vauvenargues
When love is concerned, it is easier to renounce a feeling than
to give up a habit. proust
“His love is violent but base”: a possible sentence. “His
love is deep but base”: an impossible one. simone weil
True love is like seeing ghosts: we all talk about it, but few
of us have ever seen one. la Rochefoucauld
A lover who is absolutely in love does not know whether he
is more or less in love than others, for anyone who knows this
is, just on that account, not absolutely in love.
KIERKEGAARD
Perfect love means to love the one through whom one be- came unhappy. Kierkegaard
The maxim for any love affair is: “Play and pray; but on the
whole do not pray when you are playing and do not play when
you are praying.” We cannot yet manage such simultaneities.
williams
[ 183 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
There are two kinds of faithfulness in love: one is based on
forever finding new things to love in the loved one; the other
is based on our pride in being faithful. la Rochefoucauld
It is as absurd to say that a man can’t love one woman all
the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins
to play the same piece of music. balzac
The most exclusive love for someone is always a love for
something else as well. proust
It’s not impossible to become bored in the presence of a
mistress. stendiial
In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers
the cheek. french proverb
The discovery that one cannot well give back or be given
back what one has given or been given in the same place is
sometimes as painful as the discovery that one is being loved
on principle and not from preference. williams
Love is ever rewarded either with the reciprocal, or with an
inward and secret contempt. bacon
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who
love us more than we wish. * la Rochefoucauld
Mourning the loss of someone we love is happiness compared
with having to live with someone we hate. la bruyere
[ 184 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
Once love is purged of vanity, it resembles a feeble con-
valescent, hardly able to drag itself about. chamfort
If you think you love your mistress for her own sake, you are
quite mistaken. la Rochefoucauld
The first spat in love, as the first misstep in friendship, is
the only one we can turn to good use. la bruylre
Aversion gives love its death wound, and forgetfulness buries
it. la bruylre
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
DISRAELI
Love is space and time made directly perceptible to the heart.
PROUST
We do not live in accordance with our mode of thinking, but
we think in accordance with our mode of loving. rozinov
Love is too young to know what conscience is;
But who knows not conscience is born of love?
SHAKESPEARE
Time and love are both wasted so long as time remains
working hours and love without song, rosenstock-iiuessy
Love decentralizes, truth universalizes: he who speaks ad-
dresses all mankind, he who loves incarnates all mankind in
himself. rosenstock-huessy
r 185]
Lo\c y Marriage, and Friendship
Lo\e does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking
together in the same direction. saint-exupery
Love begins with love; friendship, however warm, cannot
change to love, however mild. la bruyere
There is nothing that is so profoundly false as rationalist
flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; and
the result is a confusion more untruthful than any con-
ventions. CHESTERTON
At the beginning of love and at its end the lovers are em-
barrassed to be left alone. la bruyere
The only thing which is not purely mechanical about falling
in love is its beginning. Although all those who fall in love
do so in the same way, not all fall in love for the same reason.
There is no single quality which is universally loved.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages.
PROUST
It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since, as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad. proust
With the generosity of a great lord the happy lover smiles
upon everything about him. But the great lord's generosity
is always in moderation and involves no effort. It is not a
very expansive sort of generosity; actually it originates in
disdain. ortega y gasset
[ 186 ]
Love , Marriage, and Friendship
Love is a spaniel that prefers even punishment from one
hand to caresses from another. colion
There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom
is as precious as that of the truth which she reveals to us by
causing us to suffer. proust
An absence, the decline of a dinner invitation, an uninten-
tional coldness, can accomplish more than all the cosmetics
and beautiful dresses in the world. proust
No one was ever made wretched in a brothel. connolly
Love is a sport in which the hunter must contrive to have
the quarry in pursuit. kerr
It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly
captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.
GEORGE ELIOT
What attracts us in a woman rarely binds us to her.
COLLINS
Women grow attached to men through the favors they grant them; but men, through the same favors, are cured of their love. la bruylre
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original
resistance of the woman. balzac
Women are won when they begin to threaten.
author of Nero
[ 187 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her; but
many a woman hates a man for being a friend to her.
POPE
Such is the rule of modesty, a woman of feeling betrays her sentiments for her lover sooner by deed than by word.
STENDHAL
Prudery is a form of avarice. stendhal
A wise women never yields by appointment. stendhal
A woman with eyes only for one person, or with eyes always
averted from him, creates exactly the same impression.
LA BRUYERE
There is no fury like a woman searching for a new lover.
CONNOLLY
The man cries: Oh, my angel! The woman coos: Mama! Mama! And these two imbeciles are persuaded that they think alike. baudelaire
The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament
of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone. cioran
What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires
an accomplice. baudelaire
A woman we love rarely satisfies all our needs, and we deceive
her with a woman whom we do not love. proust
Jealousy is the great exaggerator.
[ 188 ]
SCHILLER
Love, xMarriage, and Friendship
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood
there himself. du bois
We are ashamed to admit that we are jealous, but proud
that we were and that w'e can be. la Rochefoucauld
Jealousy is always bom with love, but does not always die
with it. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Every attack of jealousy is unique and bears the stamp of the
one who occasioned it. proust
There is sanctuary in reading, sanctuary in formal society, in
the company of old friends, and in the giving of officious help
to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the
memory of another. connolly
Let the love-lorn lover cure insomnia
By murmuring amor vrNcrT omnia.
NASH
Love, as it is practiced in society, is merely the exchange of two momentary desires and the contact of two skins.
CHAMFORT
How many girls are there for whom great beauty has been
of no use but to make them hope for a great fortune?
LA BRUYERE
Women's favors, M. de used to say, are auction-room
transactions, where neither feeling nor merit ever bid success- fully. CHAMFORT
[ 189 ]
Love ? Marriage , and Friendship
A lover . . . tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the
hOUSe. MOLIERE
A beautiful woman once told her sullen, much-married-looking
lover: “When you are seen, monsieur, in society with my hus-
band, you are expected to look more cheerful than he does.”
CHAMFORT
There are few men who do not place the felicity more in the opinion of the world, of their being prosperous lovers, than in the blessing itself. Halifax
Don’t give to lovers you will replace irreplaceable presents.
L. P. SMITH
She gave herself, he took her: the third party was time, who made cuckolds of them both. chazal
Then talk not of Inconstancy,
False Hearts and broken Vows;
If I, by Miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
'Tis all that Heav’n allows.
ROCHESTER
Better to sit up all night, than to go to bed with a -dragon.
JEREMY TAYLOR
That sudden and ill-timed love affair may be compared to this: you take boys somewhere for a walk; the walk is jolly and interesting — and suddenly one of them gorges himself with oil paint. chekhov
Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.
[ 190 ]
NOVALIS
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
One may be a blameless
bachelor, and it is but a
step to Congreve.
MARIANNE MOORE
Love-making is radical, while marriage is conservative.
HOFFER
Romantic love can very well be represented in the moment, but conjugal love cannot, because an ideal husband is not one who is such once in his life, but one who every day is
SUCh. KIERKEGAARD
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits
prefer unhappiness. Santayana
Unmarried men very rarely speak the truth about the things
that most nearly concern them; married men, ne\er.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be pref-
erable. ade
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of
the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. goethe
Love matches, as they are called, have illusion for their
father and need for their mother. nietzsche
One should only celebrate a happy ending; celebrations at
the outset exhaust the joy and energy needed to urge us for-
ward and sustain us in the long struggle. And of all celebra-
tions a wedding is the worst; no day should be kept more
quietly and humbly. goethe
[ 191 ]
Love, Marriage ; and Friendship
The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of
the music of soldiers going into battle. heine
Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle.
ABOUT
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning that it was someone else. Rogers
Marriage is a covered dish. swiss proverb
To live with someone and to live in someone are two funda- mentally different matters. There are people in whom one can live without living with them, and vice versa. To com- bine both requires the purest degree of love and friendship.
GOETHE
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
DR. JOHNSON
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
VOLTAIRE
Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it refers. shaw
How I do hate those words “an excellent marriage/' In them
is contained more of wicked worldliness than any other words
one ever hears spoken. trollope
Be not hasty to marry; it's better to have one plow going
than two cradles, and more profit to have a bam filled than
a hed. dr. fuller
[ 192 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry. chekhov
A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the
same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
E. HUBBARD
Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking to manage them, but they always fail. dr. johxsox
A naturally ironical man w r ould always be henpecked if he
married. Kierkegaard
A man too good for the world is no good for his w T ife.
YIDDISH PROVERB
When I hear that “Possession is the gra\e of love,” I re- member that a religion may begin with the Resurrection.
BRADLEY
When a man has married a wife he finds out whether
I ler knees and elbows are only glued together.
BLAKE
“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive. bradley
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying
to play the violin. balzac
The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a
philosopher or a fool. balzac
[ 193 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
It is often seen that bad husbands have very good wives:
whether it be, that it raiseth the price of their husbands' kind-
ness, when it comes, or that the wives take a pride in their
patience. bacon
In marriage the husband should have two eyes and the wife
but one. lyly
The most happy marriage I can picture . . . would be the
union of a deaf man to a blind woman. coleridge
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
CONNOLLY
A wife is to thank God her husband hath faults. ... A husband without faults is a dangerous observer. Halifax
Passionate men generally make amends at the foot of the
account. Such a man, if he is angry one day without any
sense, will the next day be as kind without any reason.
HALIFAX
Forty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin and
forty years of marriage make her look like a public building.
WILDE
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry
it, and sometimes three. dumas
War is no strife
To the dark house and the destested wife.
SHAKESPEARE
[ 194 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
A man may pass through a barrage with less damage to his
character than through a squabble with a nagging wife. Many
domestic and commercial experiences lea\e blacker and more
permanent marks on the soul than thrusting a bayonet
through an enemy in a trench fight. shaw
To marry a second time represents the triumph of hope
over experience. dr. Johnson
With all her experience, every woman expects to do better
when she marries a second time, and some do. feather
Remarried widowers, it has been observed, tend to confound
the persons of their wives. The reason, I suppose, is that
they identify the substance. bradley
Marriage is to politics what the lever is to engineering. The
state is not founded upon single individuals but upon couples
and groups. novalis
The family is a good institution because it is uncongenial.
The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt
against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, revolting
against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like man-
kind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our younger brother
is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the
world; he is old, like the world. Chesterton
For millions of men and women the family is the one and
only setting in which human relationships are not governed
predominantly by considerations of bargaining. mascall
[ 195 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than
a cage is natural to a cockatoo. shaw
A fool knows more in his own house than a wise body in
another man's. cervantes
When family pride ceases to act, individual selfishness comes
into play. tocqueville
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
LEWES
The regal and parental tyrant differ only in the extent of their dominions and the number of their slaves.
DR. JOHNSON
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
NIETZSCHE
Whenever there is a group of young people, there is a repub- lic. With marriage the system changes. Married couples want order, safety, peace, and quiet; they wish to live as a family in a family, as an orderly household; they seek for a genuine monarchy. novalis
Children are aliens, and we treat them as such. Emerson
Children are horribly insecure; the life of a parent is the life of a gambler. Sydney smith
A spoiled child never loves its mother. sir henry taylor
A child tells in the street what its father and mother say at
home. the talmud
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
The best brought-up children are those who ha\e seen their
parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parents' first duty'.
SHAW
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. wilde
When one makes children unhappy, one is a criminal and
runs the risk of killing them. When one makes them happy,
one does right, but one runs the risk of making them silly,
presumptuous, and insolent. peguy
The words a father speaks to his children in the privacy of
the home are not overheard at the time, but, as in whispering
galleries, they will be clearly heard at the end and by posterity.
RICHTER
When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry. Yiddish proverb
Pastors come for your wine and officers for your daughters.
DUTCH PROVERB
I cannot bear the crying of children, but when my child cries, I don't hear. chekhov
A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he
likes, and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass
for a philosopher; but a daughter is a different matter.
CHEKHOV
When children appear, we justify all our weaknesses, com- promises, snobberies, by saying: “It's for the children’s sake/'
CHEKHOV
LW7J
Lo\e, Marriage, and Friendship
Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.
DOUGLAS
One must ha\e the courage to give children up; their wisdom
is not ours. chardonne
Men love their children, not because they are promising
plants, but because they are theirs. Halifax
Lo\e is presently out of breath when it is to go uphill, from
the children to the parents. Halifax
Father's birthday. He would have been 96, 96, yes, today;
and could have been 96, like other people one has known:
but mercifully was not. His life would have utterly ended
mine. Virginia woolf
Come for your inheritance and you may have to pay for the
funeral. Yiddish proverb
We were already twenty in family, so my grandmother had
a baby. Spanish proverb
It is not easy to find the relatives of a poor man.
MENANDER
One would be in less danger
From the wiles of the stranger
If one's own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.
[ 198 ]
NASH
Love , Marriage, and Friendship
The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.
YIDDISH PROVERB
Simple people suffer from mothers-in-law; intellectuals from daughters-in-law. chekhov
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage con-
templates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar
facts of anthropology. eraser
A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot,
for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle.
EMERSON
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. Emerson
Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants,
but not always best subjects. bacon
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind
with a part of another; people are friends in spots.
SANTAYANA
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
NIETZSCHE
Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. “This man is a good mathematician,” someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. “That one is a good soldier.” He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way. pascal
[ 199 ]
Love, Marriage , and Friendship
Thus I was wretched and my wretched life was dearer to me
than my friend had been. Gladly as I would have changed
it, I would rather have been deprived of my friend than of
my grief. saint augustine
One must not become attached to animals: they do not last
long enough. Or to men: they last too long. anonymous
If anyone is to remain pleased with you, he should be pleased
with himself whenever he thinks of you. bradley
In friendship nobody has a double.
SCHILLER
The friend does not count his friends on his fingers; they are
not numerable. thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
THOREAU
What friends really mean to each other can be demonstrated
better by the exchange of a magic ring or a horn than by
psychology. Hofmannsthal
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
WILLIAM JAMES
Friendship cannot live with ceremony, nor without civility.
HALIFAX
A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn. thomas fuller
[ 200 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
We have fewer friends than we imagine, but more than we
know. HOFMANNSTHAL
Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that
we give him no cause for envy. nietzsche
A man who hides tyranny, patronage, or even charity behind
the name and appearance of friendship suggests that in-
famous priest who poisoned people with holy wafers.
CHAMFORT
To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike. diane de poitiers
Everybody’s friend is nobody’s.
SCHOPENHAUER
Who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has ne’er had
one. COLERIDGE
Somebody said: “There are two persons whom I have not
thought deeply about. That is the proof of my love for them.”
NIETZSCHE
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them.
MOLIERE
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Few friendships would endure if each party knew what his
friend said about him in his absence, even when speaking
sincerely and dispassionately. pascal
[ 201 ]
Love, Marriage, and Friendship
Whoever has flattered his friend successfully, must at once
think himself a knave, and his friend a fool. pope
To get to know a friend, you must share an inheritance with
him. GERMAN PROVERB
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal. dr. Johnson
However fastidious we may be in love, we forgive more faults in love than in friendship. la bruyere
There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
THOREAU
Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you. l. p. smith
No man regards himself as in all ways inferior to the man he most admires. la Rochefoucauld
We are easily consoled for the misfortunes of our friends
if they give us the chance to prove our devotion.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out. TALLEYRAND (of Mme. de Stael)
Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.
CHESTERFIELD
[ 202 ]
Love , Marriage, and Friendship
Those friends who are above interest are seldom above
jealousy. Halifax
As in political, so in literary action, a man wins friends for
himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices. conrad
A wit remarked of an old companion who came back to him
in his prosperity: “He not only wants his friends to be well
off; he insists upon it.” chamfort
If a friend tell thee a fault, imagine always that he telleth
thee not the whole. dr. fuller
How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be
at when sick. dr. Johnson
I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask
me to do up a parcel. l. p. smith
If you want a person's faults, go to those who love him. They
will not tell you, but they know. Stevenson
Our friends show us what we can do, our enemies teach us
what we must do. goethe
Street angel, house devil.
GERMAN PROVERB
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to he
loved. MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
[ 203 ]
The Professions
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. lamb
A lawyer's dream of heaven — every man reclaimed his property
at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his
forefathers. Samuel butler (ii)
It is easier to make certain things legal than to make them
legitimate. chamfort
Poverty sets a reduced price on crime. chamfort
Said a man ingenuously to one of his friends: “This morning
we condemned three men to death. Two of them definitely
deserved it." chamfort
Such professions [as] the soldier and the lawyer . . . give
ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions.
If you have composed a bad opera you may persuade yourself
that it is a good one; if you have carved a bad statue you can
think yourself better than Michelangelo. But if you have lost
a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client
is hanged you cannot pretend that you have got him off.
CHESTERTON
[ 207 ]
The Professions
Law is born from despair of human nature.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent. defoe
The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more
difficult is it to bring it home. conan doyle
The sacredness of human life is a formula that is good only
inside a system of law. o. w. holmes, jr.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges. France
It is questionable whether, when we break a murderer on
the wheel, we aren't lapsing into precisely the mistake of the
child who hits the chair he bumps into. lichtenberg
The law of diminishing returns holds good in almost every
part of our human universe. aldous huxley
If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of
the lawyers in the first place. Halifax
Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons,
viz. by those that make them, by those that execute them,
and by those that suffer if they break them. Halifax
A popular judge is a deformed thing, and plaudits are fitter
for players than for magistrates. bacon
[208]
The Professions
All those who have written of laws have written either as
philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the
philosophers, they make imaginary commonwealths, and their
discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they
are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the
states in which they live, what is received law, and not what
ought to be law; for the wisdom of a lawmaker is one, that
of a lawyer is another. There are in nature certain fountains
of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams:
and like as waters do take tinctures and tastes from the soils
through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to
the regions and governments where they are planted, though
they proceed from the same fountains. Again, the wisdom of
a lawmaker consisteth not only in a platform of justice, but
in the wise application thereof. bacon
If human society cannot be earned on without lawsuits, it
cannot be carried on without penalties. aristotle
The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want. Men
do not become tyrants so as not to suffer cold. aristotle
The worse our habits, the more we have what is called good
legislation. je.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the
hands of other men. shaw
A revolt of the judiciary is more dangerous to a government
than any other, even a military revolt. Now and then it uses
the military to suppress disorder, but it defends itself every
day by means of the courts. tocqueville
[ 209 ]
The Professions
To render a people obedient and keep them so, savage laws
inefficiently enforced are less effective than mild laws en-
forced by an efficient administration regularly, automatically,
as it were, every day and on all alike. tocqueville
Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force
to being the last resort. ortega y gasset
One law for the ox and the ass is oppression. blake
Whilst we have prisons, it matters little which of us occupy
the cells. shaw
Every kind of government seems to be afflicted by some evil
inherent in its nature, and the genius of the legislator con-
sists in his having a clear idea of this evil. A state may survive
the influence of a host of bad laws, and the mischief they
cause is frequently exaggerated; but a law which encourages
the growth of the canker within must prove fatal in the end,
although its evil consequences may not be immediately
apparent. tocqueville
A community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual
employment of punishment than ... by the occasional oc-
currence of crime. wilde
It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases. schiller
May you have a lawsuit in which you know you are in the
right. gypsy curse
[210]
The Professions
It is by its promise of an occult sense of power that evil often
attracts the weak. hoffer
The criminal is prevented, by the very witnessing of the legal
process, from regarding his deed as intrinsically evil.
NIETZSCHE
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find
a trout in the milk. thoreau
There are certain characters who, unable to read a writ from
the court of conscience and reason, must be served with one
from a court — even though it be inferior — whose language
they understand. a. b. smith
The people should fight for the law as for their city wall.
HERACLITUS
If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.
DICKENS
Men would be great criminals did they need as many laws
as they make. darling
At the beginning of a violent revolution, the laws, made in
normal times, are milder than public opinion, suddenly made
savage by new passions. But, as the revolution continues, this
changes and, in the end, the laws become harsher than public
opinion and the latter, by its mildness, paralyzes them. *
TOCQUEVILLE
Law cannot persuade where it cannot punish.
THOMAS FULLER
[ 211 ]
The Professions
When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport: when
the tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity. The dis-
tinction between crime and justice is no greater. shaw
In the United States we easily perceive how the legal pro-
fession is qualified by its attributes, and even by its faults, to
neutralize the vices inherent in popular government. They
secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities to the nation's
democratic instincts, their superstitious attachment to what
is old to its love of novelty, their narrow views to its immense
designs, and their habitual procrastination to its ardent im-
patience. TOCQUEVILLE
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of
religion. blake
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the lawyer all
the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
SCHOPENHAUER
'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. thoreau
Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick demand a
fee for it which they do not deserve to get. heraclitus
He cures most in whom most have faith. galen
One finger in the throat and one in the rectum make a good
diagnostician. osler
Every invalid is a physician.
[ 212 ]
IRISH PROVERB
The Professions
Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it,
BACON
Keep up the spirits of your patient with the music of the viol and the psaltery, or by forging letters telling of the death of his enemies, or (if he be a cleric) by informing him that he has been made a bishop. mondeville
Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear
it. NEWMAN
Wherever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from
doing harm. Hippocrates
Stay till I am well, and then you shall tell me how to cure
myself. dr. Johnson
Fashions in therapy may have some justification; fashions in
diagnosis have none. herrick and tyson
A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body
to discourage dangerous competition. haskins
It is the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their
physician ... for a physician who does not admit the
reality of the disease cannot be supposed to take much pains
to cure it. cullen
The sours maladies have their relapses like the body’s. What
we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new
form of the disease. la Rochefoucauld
[213]
The Professions
When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease he has:
he dies of his whole life. peguy
The physics of a man's circulation are the physics of the
waterworks of the town in which he lives, but once out of
gear you cannot apply the same rules for the repair of the
one as of the other. osler
Did you ever observe that there are two classes of patients
in states, slaves and freemen; and the slave doctors run about
and cure the slaves, or wait for them in dispensaries — prac-
titioners of this sort never talk to their patients individually
or let them talk about their o wn individual complaints. The
slave doctor prescribes what mere experience suggests, as if
he had exact knowledge, and when he has given his orders, like
a tyrant, he rushes off with equal assurance to some other
servant who is ill. But the other doctor, who is a freeman,
attends and practices on freemen; and he carries his inquiries
far back, and goes into the nature of the disorder; he enters
into discourse with the patient and with his friends, and is
at once getting information from the sick man and also in-
structing him as far as he is able, and he will not prescribe
until he has at first convinced him. If one of those empirical
physicians, who practice medicine without science, were to
come upon the gentleman physician talking to his gentleman
patient and using the language almost of philosophy, be-
ginning at the beginning of the disease and discoursing about
the whole nature of the body, he would burst into a hearty
laugh — he would say what most of those who are called
doctors always have at their tongues' end: Foolish fellow, he
would say, you are not healing the sick man but educating
him; and he does not want to be made a doctor but to get
well. PLATO
Don't ask the doctor; ask the patient.
[ 214 ]
YIDDISH PROVERB
The Professions
It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice
medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it.
OSLER
Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. osler
Don't touch the patient — state first what you see. osler
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. osler
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the
masses not to take medicine. osler
Illnesses must be regarded as a madness of the body, indeed
as idees fixes. novalis
The sick man lets the doctor call out because he cannot help him. novalis
Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose. osler
Every sickness is a musical problem; every cure a musical
solution. NOVALIS
The relation between psychiatrists and other kinds of lunatic
is more or less the relation of a convex folly to a concave one.
KRAUS
What fast friends picturesqueness and typhus often are!
DICKENS
[ 215 ]
The Professions
A good deal of superciliousness
Is based on biliousness.
People seem as proud as peacocks
Of any infirmity, be it hives or dementia praecox.
NASH
Syphilis simulates every other disease. It is the only disease necessary to know. Know syphilis in all its manifestations and relations, and all other things clinical will be added to you. OSLER
Medicine is the only profession that labors incessantly to
destroy the reason for its existence. bryce
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom
we only make promises; pain we obey. proust
It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the
sounder. thoreau
It is not the number of nervous diseases and patients that has grown, but the number of doctors able to study the diseases. chekhov
Neurosis does not deny the existence of reality, it merely
tries to ignore it: psychosis denies it and tries to substitute something else for it. A reaction which combines features of both these is the one we call normal or “healthy”; it denies reality as little as neurosis, but then, like a psychosis, is con- cerned with effecting a change in it. freud
A doctor used to say: “Only heirs really pay well.”
CHAMFORT
[ 216 ]
The Professions
No doubt fate would find it easier than I do to relieve you
of your illness. But you will be able to convince yourself
that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your
hysterical misery into common unhappiness. freud
It is not the business of the doctor to say that we must go
to a watering place; it is his affair to say that certain results
to health will follow if we do go to a watering place.
CHESTERTON
To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.
OSLER
Medicine is a science, acquiring a practice an art.
ANONYMOUS
The priest's friend loses his faith, the doctor's his health, the lawyer's his fortune. Venetian proverb
A man who preaches in the stocks will always have hearers
enough. dr. Johnson
Everything suffers by translation except a bishop.
CHESTERFIELD
Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment that he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. chesterfield
The dreary thing about most new causes is that they are
praised in such very old terms. Every new religion bores us
with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and
the higher life. cues i er i on
[ 217 ]
The Professions
I am much tempted to say of metaphysicians what Scaliger
said of the Basques: "They are said to understand one an-
other, but I don't believe a word of it." chamfort
Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his
superior. collins
I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take
a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
BAUDELAIRE
If one wishes to know the real power of the press, one should pay attention, not to what it says, but to the way in which it is listened to. There are times when its very heat is a symptom of weakness and prophesies its end. Its clamors and its fears often speak in the same voice. It only cries so loud because its audience is becoming deaf.
TOCQUEVILLE
The immense nausea of advertisements. baudelaire
Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful
adjectives. valery
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its func-
tion is to make the worse appear the better. santayana
Even were a cook to cook a fly, he would keep the breast for himself. polish proverb
Modesty is ruin to a harlot.
THE HITOPADESA
Thieves hunt in couples but a liar alone.
AMERICAN PROVERB
[218]
The Professions
Servants sometimes don’t see what we show them, but they
alwa)s see what we hide from them. depret
The highest panegyric . . . that private virtue can receive
is the praise of servants. dr. Johnson
If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason
to apprehend that he will tell many lies for himself?
DR. JOHNSON
Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact. t. h. huxle*
Astronomy was the daughter of idleness. fontenelle
An officer is always much more respected than any other man who has as little money. dr. Johnson
Those who counsel do not pay. flemish proverb
The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.
SHAW
Those who cannot miss an opportunity of saying a good thing ... are not to be trusted with the management of any great question. hazlitt
Some, for fear their orations should giggle, will not let them
smile. thomas fuller
Critics are like brushers of noblemen’s clothes. Herbert
[ 219 ]
The Professions
A writer with real taste trying to attract our surfeited public
is like a young woman set inside a circle of old libertines.
CHAMFORT
How these authors magnify their office! One dishonest
plumber does more harm than a hundred poetasters.
BIRRELL
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
DR. JOHNSON
No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them. dr. johnson
There is often found in commentators a spontaneous strain
of invective and contempt more eager and venomous than
is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics against
those whom he is hired to defame. dr. johnson
I confess to some pleasure from ... a rattling oath in the
mouth of truckmen and teamsters. How laconic and brisk
it is by the side of a page of the North American Review.
EMERSON
A professor’s opinion: not Shakespeare is the thing, but the commentaries on him. chekhov
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished
for any very remarkable felicities of expression. alcott
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of
human hopes than a public library. dr. johnson
[ 220 ]
The Professions
There be some men are born only to suck out the poison of
books. JONSON
A scholar reads the books of other scholars, lest he shall say
something that shows ignorance. ... He dare not miss a
trick; just as the social climber dare not miss a party.
CHAPMAN
It is better to speak wisdom foolishly, like the saints, rather than to speak folly wisely, like the dons. Chesterton
One chops the wood, the other does the grunting.
YIDDISH PROVERB
If I dealt in candles, the sun would never set.
YIDDISH PROVERB
Patience is a most necessary quality for business: many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.
CHESTERFIELD
When a merchant speaks of sheep he means the hide.
SWISS PROVERB
The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product.
ELLIS
A corporation cannot blush. ascribed to howel walsh
It is unquestionably possible for an incorruptible man to
succeed in business. But his scruples are an embarrassment.
He must make up in ability for what he lacks in moral
obliquity. chapman
Men of business must not break their word twice.
THOMAS FULLER
[ 221 ]
The Professions
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry
loose is not nailed down.
ASCRIBED TO COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspira- tions. T. H. HUXLEY
The investigator should have a robust faith — and yet not
believe. Bernard
Basic research is when I'm doing what I don't know I'm
doing. BRAUN
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpar-
donable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go
about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the
police do an unmuzzled dog. t. h. huxley
To make a trade of laughing at a fool is the highway to
become one. thomas fuller
The best qualification of a prophet is to have a good memory.
HALIFAX
He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man. hazlitt
The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted
idea is worth a fortune to somebody. Fitzgerald
The humorist runs with the hare; the satirist hunts with
the hounds. father knox
[ 222 ]
The Professions
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
L. F. SMITH
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof sheets, he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose
Of pOX. BAUDELAIRE
Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have
something to say because they write. kraus
As a rule, hatred of strangers and love of his native soil com-
prise the whole of a soldier's feeling for the public good,
even in free societies. tocqueville
That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is rank blasphemy.
SHAKESPEARE
Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he under- stands. For example, every person who has mustered a pro- fession is a skeptic concerning it and, consequently, a revolu- tionist. SHAW
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
DOUGLAS
A wit has said that one might divide mankind into officers, serving maids, and chimney sweeps. To my mind this remark is not only witty but profound, and it would require a great speculative talent to devise a better classification. When a classification does not ideally exhaust its object, a haphazard classification is altogether preferable, because it sets imagina- tion in motion. kierkegaard
[ 223 ]
History
The essential matter of history is not what happened but
what people thought or said about it. maitland
The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it
and leave the design intelligible. dix
History is on every occasion the record of that which one
age finds worthy of note in another burckiiardt
History is the science of what never happens twice. valery
The handwriting on the wall may be a forgery. hodgson
Tales of noble self-sacrifice never remain mere adjuncts to
a creed, or portions of a partisan tradition. They contain
in themselves the whole of salvation. Here are the gems in
the treasury of a nation’s life; and it matters not to later
ages whether the geological strata in which they lie embedded
be Catholic or Protestant, Christian or pagan, political or
religious. chapman
There is properly no history, only biography.
EMERSON
History
The historians of antiquity taught how to command, those
of our time only how to obey; in their writings, the author
often appears great, but humanity is always diminutive.
TOCQUEVILLE
Every beginning is a consequence — every beginning ends something. valery
What a vast difference there is between the barbarism that
precedes culture and the barbarism that follows it. hebbel
It is just possible to imagine what past epochs included in
their thinking, but not what they excluded.
HOFMANNSTHAL
Doctrines must take their beginning from the beginning of the matters of which they treat. vico
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of
as including our own. lichtenberg
Just as the children's crusade may be said to typify the Middle Ages, precocious children are typical of the present age. KIERKEGAARD
The Middle Ages may have been a time of salutary delay. If it had exploited the earth's surface as we are doing, we would perhaps not be around at all. burckhardt
The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ig-
norance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
SWIFT
[ 228 ]
History
To medieval man the world was itself the ultramundane
and the supernatural. ortega y gasset
It would be a good thing if man concerned himself more
with the history of his nature than with the history of his
deeds. hebbel
When gossip grows old it becomes myth. lec
During a golden age, almost everything that glitters is real
gold. ORTEGA Y GASSET
Histories of the downfall of kingdoms, and revolutions of
empires, are read with great tranquillity. dr. Johnson
If all the dreams which men had dreamed during a particular
period were written down, they would give an accurate notion
of the spirit which prevailed at the time. hegel
History cannot be more certain than when he who creates
the things also narrates them. vico
Temporal things will have their weight in the world, and
tho zeal may prevail for a time, and get the better in a
skirmish, yet the war endeth generally on the side of flesh
and blood, and will do so till mankind is another thing than
it is at present. Halifax
The thought of the Middle Ages was not limited, but perhaps
its vocabulary was. williams
[229 ]
History
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork? lec
The great achievements of the past were the adventures of
the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness
of the past. whitehead
It is not St. Augustine's nor St. Ambrose's works that will
make so wise a divine as ecclesiastical history thoroughly read
and observed. bacon
In history, as soon as the man of action puts in an appearance
and is discussed and pampered, it means that a period of
rebarbarization looms. ortega y gasset
Real stories, in distinction from those we invent, have no
author. Although history owes its existence to men, it is
not "made" by them. hannah arendt
The hour of their crime does not strike simultaneously for
all nations: this explains the permanence of history.
CIORAN
The annals of all nations bear witness that an enslaved
people always suffers more deeply from those of its own
blood who take service under the conquerors than it suffers
from the conquerors themselves. freeman
Two things we ought to learn from history: one, that we
are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that
we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them, if we
do not advance beyond them. t. Arnold
[230 ]
History
Someone said: "The dead writers are remote from us because
we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they
are that which we know. t.s. eliot
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all
classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tra-
dition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy
of those who merely happen to be walking around.
CHESTERTON
By no means every destruction has been followed by re-
juvenation, and the great destroyers of life remain an enigma
tO US. BURCKHARDT
Historic continuity with the past is not a duty, it is only a
necessity. o. w. holmes, jr.
One age cannot be completely understood if all the others
are not understood. The song of history can only be sung
as a whole. ortega y gasset
What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind,
to those who stood firm against the opinion of their con-
temporaries. EMERSON
History is the sole consolation left to the people, for it shows
them that their ancestors were as unhappy as they are, or
even more so. chamfort
In analyzing history, do not be too profound, for often the
causes are quite superficial. Emerson
[ 231 ]
History
Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious
in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not
at all suited to civilized circumstances. bagehot
'This or that hallway would have to be the most beautiful
if only because it leads to our room.” What coldness and
heartlessness there is in this attitude: the ignoring of the
silenced moans of all the vanquished who, as a rule, had
wanted nothing else but to preserve what had come into
being. How much must perish so that something new may
arise! burckhardt
The major fact about history is that in large part it appears
criminal. w. e. Arnold, jr.
In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by
inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a
shock from outside put an end to the whole. burckhardt
Every successful wickedness is, to say the least, a scandal.
. . . The only lesson to be derived from the successful mis-
deeds of the strong is to hold life here and now in no higher
esteem than it deserves. burckhardt
All genuine records are at first tedious, because and insofar
as they are alien. They set forth the views and interests of
their time for their time and come no step to meet us. But
the shams of today are addressed to us and are therefore
made amusing and intelligible, as fake antiques generally are.
burckhardt
History is all improvisation, all will, all enterprise. There are no frontiers, there are no timetables, no itineraries, herzen
[ 232 ]
Historv
There are two camps which, under different disguises, remain
the same throughout all history, and may be distinguished
either in a great political party or in a group of a dozen young
men. One represents logic; the other history: one stands for
dialectics; the other for evolution. Truth is the main object
of the former, and feasibility of the latter. There is no ques-
tion of choice between them; thought is harder to tame
than the passions and pulls with irresistible strength.
HERZEN
The word urbanity had gained circulation and become part of the language at the beginning of the seventeenth century; it was fair that the word vulgarity should become part of it at the end of the eighteenth. mme. de stael
I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without think- ing about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes, whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.
tocqueville
When government policies or historical accidents make the attainment of individual self-respect difficult, the nationalist spirit of the people becomes more ardent and extreme.
HOFFER
The French Revolution first introduced into Europe the notion of the tissue-paper frontier. Hitherto, all boundaries had been marches, forests, mountains, dikes; that is to say, significant boundaries. But when boundaries can be drawn on paper, they need have no more significance than the stroke of a pen or a piece of chalk. rosenstock-huessy
[2351
History
In 1799 General Tamax received a proposal from Napoleon,
who wished to enter the Russian service, but they were unable
to agree, as Napoleon demanded the rank of major.
TOLSTOI
Great historical transformations are always bought dearly,
often after one has already thought that one got them at a
bargain price. burckhardt
During periods of crisis, positions which are false or feigned
are very common. Entire generations falsify themselves to
themselves; that is to say, they wrap themselves up in artistic
styles, in doctrines, in political movements which are in-
sincere and which fill the lack of genuine convictions. When
they get to be about forty years old, those generations become
null and void, because at that age one can no longer live on
fictions. ORTEGA Y GASSET
A historical judgment should always be such that it can be
endorsed at least by all nations if not by all factions.
BURCKHARDT
Systems die; instincts remain. o. w. holmes, jr.
After a lost war one should only write comedies. novalis
When the canaille roturi&re took the liberty of beheading the
high noblesse , it was done less, perhaps, to inherit their goods
than to inherit their ancestors. heine
The future smells of Russian leather, blood, godlessness, and
many whippings. I should advise our grandchildren to be
born with very thick skins on their backs. heine
[ 234 ]
History
So long as we read about revolutions in books, they all look
very nice — like those landscapes which, as artistic engravings
on white vellum, look so pure and friendly: dung heaps
engraved on copper do not smell, and the eye can easily wade
through an engraved morass. heine
[The Victorians] were lame giants; the strongest of them
walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. . . . There
is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from a high creative
mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when
George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There
are also moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without
even the excuse of sex. Chesterton
The great mistake of the Marxists and of the whole of the
nineteenth century was to think that by walking straight on
one mounted upward into the air. simone weil
Men after death ... are understood worse than men of
the moment, but heard better. nietzsche
I have read ... in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, that
history is philosophy teaching by examples. bolingbroke
Respect for the past must be pious, but not mad. rozinov
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new
year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose,
new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a
man starts on the strange assumption that he has never ex-
isted before, it is quite certain that he will never exist after-
ward. CHESTERTON
[ 255 ]
History
Not only progress but mere change, mere movement, has
had its countless martyrs. nietzsche
Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature. kraus
Progress is the mother of problems. Chesterton
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
GISSING
The newspaper is the second hand in the clock of history;
and it is not only made of baser metal than those which
point to the minute and the hour, but it seldom goes right.
SCHOPENHAUER
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words.
An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new
barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words
bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second
half of the nineteenth. iioffer
A nation's preoccupation with history is not infrequently an
effort to obtain a passport for the future. Often it is a forged
passport. hoffer
We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to
live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a
pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too un-
comfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed im-
mediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those
of jumping up with a yell. To live in the future is a contra-
diction in terms. The future is dead, in the perfectly definite
sense that it is not alive. Chesterton
[ 236 ]
History
Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age.
FLAUBERT
It is the mission of history to make our fellow beings ac- ceptable to US. ORTEGA Y GASSET
Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made
by its parents. It may assent to them, but it brings them out
into the open. whitehead
Men resemble their contemporaries even more than their
progenitors. Emerson
We are the children of our age, but children who can never
know their mother. l. p. smith
Suffering only becomes unbearable when, separated from the
great silence in the world, it is merely a part of the noise
of history, and then has to bear its burden alone. picard
Perhaps war is becoming more and more violent and ter-
rible today because it wants to be seen as what it really is,
to be seen quite clearly as the terrible thing it really is, and
not as a mere part of the noise of the radio. picard
Chance is a mask, and it is precisely the historian's duty to
lift it or tear it away. gourmqnt
It is not true that contemporaries misjudge a man. Competent
contemporaries judge him . . . much better than posterity,
which is composed of critics no less egotistical, and obliged
to rely exclusively on documents easily misinterpreted.
SANTAYANA
[ 237 ]
History
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the un-
reasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
SHAW
The obscurest epoch is today. stevenson
Modern man no longer trusts his aunts and grandmothers; they, like old furniture, become the outfit of museums. He does trust textbooks. rosenstock-huessy
We fret over improving things, that posterity may be happy; and posterity will say as usual: “In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past.” chekhov
A historian is a prophet in reverse. schlegel
By seeking after origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward.
NIETZSCHE
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. forster
It requires an impartial man to make a good historian; but
it is the partial and one-sided who hunt out the materials.
ACTON
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
SHAW
It is the province of the historian to find out, not what was,
but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find
nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is
being fought, there are hearts beating. thoreau
[ 238 ]
History
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability
to invent. stendhal
All the historical books that contain no lies are extremely
tedious. FRANCE
The historian , essentially, wants more documents than he
can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than
he can really take. henry james
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he
could prove, history could not be written. dr. Johnson
The middle sort of historians . . . spoil all; they will chew
our meat for us. montaigne
Neither paganism nor Christianity ever produced a profound
political historian whose mind was not turned to gloom by
the contemplation of the affairs of men. It is almost a test to
distinguish the great narrators from the great thinkers.
acton
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
FONTENELLE
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
STERNE
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Santayana
Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood back-
wards. KIERKEGAARD
[ 239 ]
History
Repetition is reality, and it is the seriousness of life.
KIERKEGAARD
Happy the people whose annals are boring to read.
MONTESQUIEU
You want to know how story go, wait till quarrel come.
NEGRO PROVERB
At the moment you are prophesying in the desert, the fine
pollen of an oak is falling to the ground and, in a century,
will grow up into a forest. richter
There is in all change something at once sordid and agree-
able, smacking of infidelity and household removals.
BAUDELAIRE
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. hardy
It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Whether a prophet is true or false does not depend upon the
correctness of his predictions. It depends upon the purity and
sincerity of his concern for the things threatened by human
sin and divine anger. Indeed his predictions are the more
likely to be correct, the less he is a true prophet and the more
affinities he has within himself to the destructive tendencies
of his age. heller
“Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb.
“Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer
the truth. whitehead
[ 240 ]
ACTION
Action
Vice stirs up war; virtue fights. vauvenargues
To delight in war is a merit m the soldier, a dangerous quality
in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
SANTAYANA
The martial character cannot prevail in a whole people but
by the diminution of all other virtues. dr. Johnson
Loyalty implies loyalty in misfortune; and when a soldier
has accepted any nation's uniform he has already accepted
its defeat. Chesterton
Three-quarters of a soldier's life is spent in aimlessly waiting
about. rosenstock-huessy
Children play at being soldiers. That is sensible. But why
should soldiers play at being children? kraus
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an
arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. To fight for
a reason and in a calculating spirit is something your true
warrior despises* Santayana
Action
I think Caesar was too old to find his amusement in con-
quering the world. Such a game was all right for Augustus
or Alexander. They were still young and difficult to control.
But Caesar ought to have been more mature. pascal
War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern
invention. Maine
The warrior provides for his grandfather and his grandson
at the cost, if necessary, of his life. But his sacrifice only
makes sense within a time span of at least three generations.
There can be no genuine soldier or army unless there is a
past to hand on to the future after a war is over.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
War can protect; it cannot create. whitehead
I don't at all desire war, and I'd prevent it a thousand times
over if it were in my power; but once this business is decided.
I'd be delighted if it were waged and I was there. This is a
case where it may nearly always be said, “You'll never see again
what you’ve already seen,” and I'm beginning to notice that
this is the only thing that makes three-quarters of men and
things bearable. Stendhal
In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their
SOnS. HERODOTUS
This only makes a war lawful: that it is a struggle for law
against force; for the life of a people as expressed in their
laws, their language, their government, against any effort
to impose on them a law, a language, a government which
is not theirs. maurice
[ 244 ]
Action
Wars may be caused, or empires fall, not necessarily through
some extraordinary criminality in the first place, but from
multitudinous cases of petty betrayal or individual neglect.
BUTTERFIELD
How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march
against an enemy. nietzsche
From noon until three o'clock, we had an excellent view
of all that can be seen of a battle — i.e., nothing at all. The
pleasure consists in being somewhat thrilled by the cer-
tainty that something is taking place before you that is
known to be terrible. The majestic sound of the cannon fire
is, in large measure, responsible for this effect. It is in com-
plete harmony with the impression. If the cannon produced
the shrill sound of a whistle, I don't believe it would arouse
so much emotion. I realize quite well that the sound of a
whistle would become terrible, but it would never be as fine
a one as that of the cannon. stexdiial
A few conquer by fighting, but it is well to remember that
more battles are won by submitting. e. hub bard
The reward of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
O. W. HOLMES, JR.
One bad general does better than two good ones.
NAPOLEON
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. Wellington
The third part of an army must be destroyed, before a good one can be made out of it. Halifax
[ 245 ]
Action
In order to have good soldiers a nation must be always at war.
NAPOLEON
The army is a school in which the niggardly become generous and the generous prodigal; if there are soldiers who are misers, like monsters they are very rarely seen, cervantes
Generals cannot be entrusted with anything, not even with
War. CLEMENCEAU
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
HOBBES
In time of war the loudest patriots are the greatest profiteers.
- BEBEL
War hath no fury like a noncombatant. c. e. montague
Soldiers who don't know what they're fighting for know,
nevertheless, what they're not fighting for. kraus
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
SHAW
Men that distrust their own subtlety are, in tumult and sedition, better disposed for victory than they that suppose themselves wise. For these love to consult; the other, fearing to be circumvented, to strike first. hobbes
The matter of seditions is of two kinds; much poverty and
much discontentment. And if this poverty and broken estate
in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the
mean people, the danger is imminent and great. For the
rebellions of the belly are the worst. bacon
1246 ]
Action
As a rule, insurrections — I mean even those which succeed —
begin without a leader; but they always end by securing one.
TOCQUEVILLE
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. Santayana
The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight. cocteau
The men who lose their heads most easily, and who generally
show themselves weakest on days of revolution, are the mili-
tary; accustomed as they are to have an organized force facing
them and an obedient force in their hands, they readily
become confused before the tumultuous uproar of a crowd
and in the presence of the hesitation and occasional con-
nivance of their own men. tocqueville
In times of revolution, people boast almost as much about
the imaginary crimes they propose to commit as, in normal
times, they do of the good intentions they pretend to enter-
tain. TOCQUEVILLE
In revolution there is no joy. Nor ever will be. rozinov
The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as
his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.
KRAUS *
Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials . . . such as the apple that William Tell never shot, the ride that Paul Revere never finished, the flag that Barbara Frietchie never waved.
G. W. JOHNSON
[ 247 ]
Action
It is absurd to speak of right and wrong per se . Injury, viola-
tion, exploitation, annihilation, cannot be wrong in them-
selves, for life essentially presupposes injury, violation,
exploitation, and annihilation. Nietzsche
To be engaged in opposing wrong affords but a slender guar-
antee for being right. Gladstone
Force is not a remedy.
BRIGHT
The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape
the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not
only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they
can also lie and make their lies comes true. hoffer
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
DR. FULLER
It requires great abilities to have the power of being very wicked; but not to be very wicked. It requires great abilities to conquer an army, but none to massacre it after it is con- quered. DR. JOHNSON
The more you are talked about, the less powerful you are.
DISRAELI
The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. hannah arendt
[ 248 ]
Action
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by
striking true. balzac
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his
rule begins. Kierkegaard
So much of an idealist about his ideals that he can be a
ruthless realist in his methods. Chesterton
Success has always been a great liar.
NIETZSCHE
Nothing arouses ambition so much ... as the trumpet
clang of another's fame. gracian
The man who can make others laugh secures more votes
for a measure than the man who forces them to think.
CHAZAL
Success generally depends upon knowing how long it takes to succeed. Montesquieu
A man who could not seduce men cannot save them either.
KIERKEGAARD
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. goethe
Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel
the impotence of man. This insensibility is a precious gift;
but it must be frankly admitted that, in this respect, criminals
bear a certain resemblance to our heroes. valery
[249 ]
Action
It is best for great men to shoot over, and for lesser men to
shoot short. Halifax
There may now exist great men for things that do not exist.
BURCKHARDT
The great man is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit. So long as a man's power is bound to the goal, the work, the calling, it is, in itself, neither good nor evil, only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil and corrupts the history of the world. BUBER
Great actions are not always true sons
Of great and mighty resolutions.
SAMUEL BUTLER (i)
For souls in growth, great quarrels are great emancipations.
L. P. SMITH
The world will only, in the end, follow those who have des- pised as well as served it. samuel butler (ii)
Great writers and artists should engage in politics only to the
extent necessary to defend themselves against politics. Even
without political considerations there are plenty of accusers,
prosecutors, and policemen, and in any case the role of Paul
suits them better than that of Saul. chekhov
The initiator dies — or turns traitor.
[250 ]
HEINE
Action
The world is beholden to generous mistakes for the greatest
part of the good that is done in it. Halifax
One should never wear one's best trousers to go out and battle
for freedom and truth. ibsen
No great man over complains of want of opportunity.
EMERSON
To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.
ELLIS
Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave. mark twain
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Emerson
Some men have acted courage who had it not; but no man
can act wit. Halifax
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that
it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
DR. JOHNSON
It is better to wear out one's shoes than one's sheets.
GENOESE PROVERB
We work not only to produce but to give value to time.
DELACROIX
[ 251 ]
Action
Living movements do not come of committees. newman
In order to act wisely it is not enough to be wise.
DOSTOEVSKI
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. thoreau
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.
CHESTERTON
A man who has to be convinced to act before he acts is not a man of action. . . . You must act as you breathe.
CLEMENCEAU
It is not given to the children of men to be philosophers with- out envy. Lookers-on can hardly bear the spectacle of the great
World. BAGEHOT
Action without a name, a “who” attached to it, is meaningless.
HANNAH ARENDT
There is no quicker way of getting the crowd to shout Hosan- nah than by riding into the city on the back of an ass.
NIETZSCHE
Our actions are like rhyme games: we fill out the rest of the lines with whatever motives for the actions we please.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
CHESTERTON
Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think. goethe
[252 ]
Action
It is intelligent to ask two questions: 1) Is it possible? 2) Can
I do it? But it is unintelligent to ask these questions: 1 ) Is it
real? 2 ) Has my neighbor Christopherson done it?
KIERKEGAARD
No sooner do men despair of living forever than they are dis- posed to act as though they were to exist for but a single day.
TOCQUEVILLE
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in restrospect. stevenson
Pliny leaves mankind this only alternative: either of doing
what deserves to be written, or of writing what deserves to be
read. chesterfield
The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his
special exertions, but by his habitual acts. pascal
In times when the passions are beginning to take charge of
the conduct of human affairs, one should pay less attention
to what men of experience and common sense are thinking
than to what is preoccupying the imagination of dreamers.
TOCQUEVILLE
The most advantageous negotiations are those one conducts
with human vanity, for one often obtains very substantial
things from it while giving very little of substance in return.
One never does so well when dealing with ambition or avarice.
TOCQUEVILLE
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most im- portant thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
DISRAELI
[ 253 ]
Action
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-
obvious. SPENGLER
There are exceptions to all rules, but it seldom answers to
follow the advice of an opponent. disraeli
In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.
EMERSON
Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.
GOLDBERG
It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the
truth. BALFOUR
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick. Beaumarchais
Every honest man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of
private and public matters. Thus, if you go on so, the result
is so. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what
you will. A prophet is a seer, not an arbitrary dictator, blake
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruc- tion to save mankind. coleridge
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
BLAKE
Romantic ruthlessness is no nearer to real politics than is romantic self-abnegation. whitehead
[ 254 ]
Action
When you say that you agree to a thing on principle, you mean
that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in
practice. bismarck
A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his fore-
fathers. DISRAELI
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the
whole mind, the aggregate nature of man, more continuously,
and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did. bagehot
Under certain circumstances, men who do not know how to
speak produce a greater impression than the finest orator. They
bring forward but a single idea, and somehow they lay it down
on the rostrum like an inscription in capital letters, which
everybody understands and in which each instantly recognizes
his own particular thought. tocqueville
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction
to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the
action process, can be expected and even calculated, the act
of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that
acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a
reaction, something of the original character of action.
HANNAH ARENDT
If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow
water. Bulgarian proverb
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we
feel a certain void. "Nothing in the paper today/' we sigh.
VALERY
[ 255 ]
Action
Exile immobilizes to some degree the minds of those who
suffer it. It imprisons them forever within the circle of ideas
which they had conceived or which were current when their
exile began. For the exile, the new conditions which have been
created in his native country and the new ways of thinking
and behaving which have been established there do not exist.
TOCQUEVILLE
He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. Halifax
[ 256 ]
Science
A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance.
RUSSELL
Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. But put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave. Bernard
He is not a true man of science who does not bring some
sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by
behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the
discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous
laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the
mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.
Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with
ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us
most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still
biographical. thoreau
If science tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were,
we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to
have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water, it is
all wrong. samuel butler (ii)
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our
pride. Bernard
[ 259 ]
Science
The scientific method cannot lead mankind because it is based
upon experiment, and every experiment postpones the present
moment until one knows the result. We always come to each
other and even to ourselves too late so soon as we wish to
know in advance what to do. rosenstock-huessy
If physical science is dangerous, as I have said, it is dangerous
because it necessarily ignores the idea of moral evil; but liter-
ature is open to the more grievous imputation of recognizing
and understanding it too well. newman
The dangers threatening modern science cannot be averted
by more experimenting, for our complicated experiments have
no longer anything to do with nature in her own right, but
with nature charged and transformed by our own cognitive
activity. Heisenberg
The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hy- pothesis by an ugly fact. t. h. huxley
There is no national science just as there is no national multi- plication table; what is national is no longer science.
CHEKHOV
Many scientific theories have, for very long periods of time, stood the test of experience until they had to be discarded owing to man's decision, not merely to make other experi- ments, but to have different experiences. heller
Someone remarked to me once: "Physicians shouldn't say,
I have cured this man, but, this man didn't die under my
care. In physics too, instead of saying, I have explained such
and such a phenomenon, one might say, I have determined
causes for it the absurdity of which cannot be conclusively
proved. uchtenberg
[ 260 ]
Science
Astrology fosters astronomy. Mankind plays its way up.
LICHTENBERG
Science has promised us truth. ... It has never promised us
either peace or happiness. le bon
The scientific view of the world, and the method of abstrac-
tion by which it is arrived at, is an autonomous and authentic
manner of dealing with what is real in the world in which we
live; it is not an instrument of merely practical utility, nor on
the other hand a philosophy, much less the only true philoso-
phy. It is not an art, it is not a religion, it is not history, it is
not a philosophy; it is something different from all these, a
special department and activity of the human spirit.
NEEDHAM
Bourgeois scientists make sure that their theories are not dan-
gerous to God or to capital. plekhanoff
The less anthropomorphic science believes itself to be, the
more anthropomorphic it is. One by one it gets rid of the
separate human traits in the nature-picture, only to find in
the end that the supposed pure nature which it holds in its
hand is — humanity pure and complete. spengler
“One and one make two” assumes that the changes in the
shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible
for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
whitehead
A crystal lacks rhythm from excess of pattern, while a fog is unrhythmic in that it exhibits a patternless confusion of detail.
WHITEHEAD
[ 261 ]
Science
Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at nature directly,
but only with the side of his eye. He must look through her
and beyond her. To look at her is as fatal as to look at the
head of Medusa. It turns the man of science to stone.
THOREAU
The mathematician may be compared to a designer of gar- ments, who is utterly oblivious of the creatures whom his gar- ments may fit. To be sure, his art originated in the necessity for clothing such creatures, but this was long ago; to this day a shape will occasionally appear which will fit into the garment as if the garment had been made for it. Then there is no end of surprise and delight. dantzig
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
RUSSELL
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordi- nary language. It is essentially a written language, and it en- deavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The alegbraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable. whitehead
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of
thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas
of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play
which is named after him. That would be claiming too much.
But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia.
This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential
to the play, she is very charming — and a little mad.
WHITEHEAD
[ 262 ]
Science
There can be mathematicians of the first order who cannot
count. novalis
It is the stars as not known to science that I would know, the
stars which the lonely traveler knows. thoreau
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is domi-
nated by the idea of approximation. russell
Science is spectrum analysis: art is photosynthesis. kraus
[ 263 ]
Theory and Practice
There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science. goethe
Art is I; Science is We. Bernard
Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down. chazal
The history of art is the history of revivals.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
The beautiful remains so in ugly surroundings. chazal
Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of their bodies? shakespeare
Mechanical excellence is the only vehicle of genius. blake We have Art that we may not perish from Truth.
NIETZSCHE
The best is the enemy of the good.
[ 267 ]
VOLTAIRE
The Arts
The art of seeing nature is a thing almost as much to be
acquired as the art of reading the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
CONSTABLE
The canons of art are merely the expression in specialized
forms of the requirements for depth of experience.
WHITEHEAD
Art is a vice, a pastime which differs from some of the most
pleasant vices and pastimes by consolidating and intensifying
the organs which it exercises. sickert
Art may be said to be the individual quality of failure, or the
individual coefficient of error, of each highly skilled and culti-
vated craftsman in his effort to attain to the expression of form.
SICKERT
Is it the essence of the artistic way of looking at things that
it looks at the world with a happy eye? Wittgenstein
The work of art is the object seen sub specie aetemitatis; and
the good life is the world seen sub specie aetemitatis . This is
the connection between art and ethics.
The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them; the view sub specie aetemitatis from outside, in such a way that they have the whole world as background. Wittgenstein
The whole of art is one long roll of revelation, and it is re-
vealed only to those whose minds are to some extent what
Horace, speaking of a woman whose heart is free, calls vacant.
It is not for those whose minds are muddied with the dirt of
politics, or heated with the vulgar chatter of society.
SICKERT
[ 268 ]
Theory and Practice
In a work of art the intellect asks questions; it does not answer
them. HEBBEL
Luck, that differs greatly from Art, creates many things that
are like it. ion of Chios
Art, then, is that which gives a pure emotion . . . which in-
vites to neither virtue nor patriotism, nor debauch, nor peace,
nor war, nor laughter, nor tears, nor anything but art itself.
GOURMONT
You are not to consider that every new and personal beauty in art abrogates past achievement as an Act of Parliament does preceding ones, or that it is hostile to the past. You are to consider these beauties, these innovations, as enrichments, as variations, as additions to an existing family. How barbarous you would seem if you were unable to bestow your admiration and affection on a fascinating child in the nursery without at once finding yourselves compelled to rush downstairs and cut its mother's throat, and stifle its grandmother. These ladies may still have their uses. sickert
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally
overcome. gide
The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making
all disagreeables evaporate. keats
“Fm hungry, Fm freezing, help me!”: here is the stuff of a
good deed, but not of a good work. joubert
There is no work of art that is without short cuts. gide
[ 269 ]
The Aits
One finds in art the means whereby he may rejoice in his
nature, another the means whereby he may temporarily over-
come and escape from his nature. In accordance with these
two needs, there are two kinds of art and artist. nietzsche
The artist doesn't see things as they are, but as he is.
ANONYMOUS
It is useless ... to urge the isolated individuality of the
artist, apart from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his
age is his individuality. Chesterton
When I hear artists . . . making fun of businessmen I think
of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
anonymous
In order that a man may stop believing in some things, there
must be germinating in him a confused faith in others. It is
curious to note that almost always the dimension of life in
which the new faith begins to establish itself is art.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Imitation is criticism. blake
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
CHESTERTON
The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have
a talent for luck. berlioz
The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas,
most of our artists are nothing else. goethe
[ 270 ]
Theory and Practice
He who does not know the mechanical side of a craft cannot
judge it. GOETHE
Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it
at fifty. degas
An artist chooses even when he confesses; perhaps above all
when he confesses. valery
Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to
go its own way. goethe
Will you refuse to recognize the divine because it is mani-
fested in art and enjoyment and not just in conscience and
action? taine
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. emerson
In periods of decadence only very independent geniuses have
a chance to survive. delacroix
I am afraid humility to genius is as an extinguisher to a candle.
SHENSTONE
To be a genius is to achieve complete possession of one’s own experience, body, rhythm, and memories. pavese
Genius is the instinct of self-preservation in a talent.
QUOTED BY SICKERT
[ 271 ]
The Arts
What is the real reason why we want to be big, to be creative
geniuses? For posterity? No. To be pointed out when we stroll
in crowded places? No. To carry on with our daily toil under
the conviction that whatever we do is worth the trouble, is
something unique — for the day, not for eternity. pavese
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies: their cousins can
tell you nothing about them. Emerson
To represent vice and misery as the necessary accompaniments
of genius is as mischievous as it is false, and the feeling is as
unclassical as the language in which it is usually expressed.
PEACOCK
A man who is a genius and doesn't know it probably isn't.
LEC
The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not de- pendent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
CONRAD
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
SANTAYANA
Most artists are sincere and most art is bad, and some insincere art (sincerely insincere) can be quite good. Stravinsky
Every artist is a moralist, though he need not preach.
SANTAYANA
When it seems that a new man or a new school has invented a new thing, it will only be found that the gifted among them have secured a firmer hold than usual of some old thing.
SICKERT
[ 272 ]
Theory and Practice
The artist is like Sunday's child — he alone sees spirits. But,
after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees
them. goethe
True perfection is achieved only by those who are prepared to destroy it. It is a by-product of greatness. clark
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they
must put their lives into the sting they give. emerson
I would have praised you more if you had praised me less.
louis xiv (to Boileau, on being praised in verse)
To justify our likes and dislikes, we generally say that the work
we dislike is not serious. sickert
Connoisseurs think the art is already done. constable
A good spectator also creates. swiss proverb
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste. GOETHE
A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long. delacroix
Good taste, besides being inwardly clear, has to be outwardly
fit. SANTAYANA
It takes taste to account for taste.
[ 273 ]
SPANISH PROVERB
The Aits
Devotion to the arts in France seems more concerned with
connoisseurship than enjoyment. joubert
What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure
of giving offense. Baudelaire
If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay — in solid
cash — the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts
would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank
heaven for hypocrisy. aldous huxley
Ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dan-
gerous to meet it alone. edith wharton
It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers nothing but
grossness in the subject. hazlitt
To approve is more difficult than to admire. Hofmannsthal
What the public like best is fruit that is overripe, cocteau
If a perfume manufacturer were to adopt the “naturalistic”
aesthetic, what scents would he bottle? val&ry
In the end physics will replace ethics just as metaphysics dis-
placed theology. The modem statistical view of ethics con-
tributes toward that. Kierkegaard
[ 274 ]
Writers and Readers
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
KRAUS
There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes. kraus
A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write
well, one needs a natural facility and an acquired difficulty.
JOUBERT
There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators. dr. johnson
It is not so much what you say in a book that constitutes its
value . . . [but] all you would like to say, which nourishes
it secretly. gide
If literature is to be made a study of human nature, you cannot
have a Christian literature. It is a contradiction in terms to
attempt a sinless literature of sinful man. newman
It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute,
but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and
suffer punishment. chekhov
Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the
wrongs of his condition. Emerson
[ 275 ]
The Arts
The only reason people write is because they are not wonder-
ful men. carson
It takes less time to learn how to write nobly than how to
write lightly and straightforwardly. nietzsche
The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple lan-
guage; emphasis spoils them. la bruyere
We all know how difficult it is, in drawing up the simplest
communication, not to say the contrary of what we mean.
SICKERT
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
SAMUEL BUTLER (i)
Rhetoric is either very good or stark naught; there is no me- dium in rhetoric. If I am not fully persuaded I laugh at the orator. selden
Literary egotism consists in playing the role of self , in making oneself a little more natural than nature, a little more oneself than one was a few minutes before. val&ry
He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none.
SHAW
Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face. Schopenhauer
Whether good or bad, style cannot be corrected. Style is in-
violable. gourmont
[ 276 ]
Writers and Readers
Many intelligent people, when about to write books, force on
their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw
up their faces when they sit for their portraits, lichtenberg
When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised
and delighted, for we thought to see an author and found a
man. pascal
To improve one's style means to improve one's thoughts and
nothing else: he who does not admit this immediately will
never be convinced of it. Nietzsche
To write simply is as difficult as to be good. maugham
It is neither the best nor the worst in a book which is un-
translatable. NIETZSCHE
The secret of authorship is in the tips of the fingers, and the
secret of an orator is on the tip of the tongue. rozinov
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever
said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
STEPHEN
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood
up to live. THOREAU
To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incom-
parably harder than to compose a whole tract about the
“woman question." txjrgenev
[ 277 ]
The Arts
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
SAKI
The art of literature, vocal or written, is to adjust the language so that it embodies what it indicates. whitehead
If immoral works of literature exist, they are works in which
there is no plot. pavese
It is the author's aim to say once and emphatically, “He said."
THOREAU
Posterity is always the author's favorite. dr. Johnson
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write
what you will never read, you have done rare things.
THOREAU
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
DR. JOHNSON
When one is polite in German, one lies. goethe
Satire, being leveled at all, is never resented for an offense by any, since every individual person makes bold to under- stand it of others. swift
Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.
KRAUS
The finest satire is that in which ridicule is combined with so little malice and so much conviction that it even rouses laugh- ter in those who are hit. lichtenberg
[ 278 ]
Writers and Readers
Prefaces are like speeches before the curtain; they make even
the most self-forgetful performers self-conscious. neilson
’Tis very difficult to write like a madman, but ’tis a very easie
matter to write like a fool. lee
I wonder why murder is considered less immoral than forni-
cation in literature. george moore
Cynicism in literary works usually signifies a certain element
of disappointed ambition. When one no longer knows what
to do in order to astonish and survive, one offers one's pudenda
to the public gaze. Everyone knows perfectly well what he will
see; but it is sufficient to make the gesture. valery
A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of
his fame whether he continues or ceases to write.
DR. JOHNSON
In a certain sense, printing proved a drawback to letters. It . . . cast contempt on books that failed to find a publisher.
GOURMONT
A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.
NIETZSCHE
Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless. pascal
Diderot used to say that a writer may have a mistress who
fashions books, but must have a wife who fashions shirts.
CHAMFORT
[ 279 ]
The Arts
An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad
as a mother who talks about her own children. disraeli
The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone
>ou know. kin hubbard
While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his
worst performance, and when he is dead we iate them by his
best. DR. JOHNSON
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts
to speak. nietzsche
The conversation of authors is not so good as might be im- agined; but, such as it is, . . . it is better than any other.
HAZLITT
Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience. joubert
The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible
scenes in the farce of life. dr. Johnson
The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his
work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.
DR. JOHNSON
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. dr. Johnson
I will like and praise some things in a young writer which yet,
if he continue in, I cannot but justly hate him for. jonson
[ 280 ]
Writers and Readers
No one ever told a story well standing up, or fasting.
BALZAC
The difference between journalism and literature is that jour- nalism is unreadable and literature is not read. wilde
A journalist is stimulated by a deadline: he writes worse when
he has time. kraus
In a novel, the author gives the leading character intelligence
and distinction. Fate goes to less trouble: mediocrities play a
part in great events simply from happening to be there.
TALLEYRAND
The business of the novelist is not to chronicle great events
but to make small ones interesting. Schopenhauer
In a good play, everyone is in the right. hebbel
In merciless and rollicking comedy life is caught in the act.
SANTAYANA
Few tragedies die game. coleridge
What would be left of our tragedies if a literate insect were to
present us his? cioran
Fate in tragedy is the created form, the virtual future as an
accomplished whole. It is not the expression of a belief at all.
Macbeth's fate is the structure of his tragedy, not an instance
of how things happen in the world. susanne langer
[ 281 ]
The Arts
A poet puts the world into a nutshell; the orator, out of a nut-
shell, brings a world. hurnand
In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet.
SHELLEY
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. thoreau
The fighting poets.
The literary vanguard.
This use of military metaphor reveals minds not militant but formed for discipline, that is, for compliance; minds born servile, Belgian minds, which can only think collectively.
BAUDELAIRE
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense . . . just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house. Coleridge
I had toward the poetic art a quite peculiar relation which was
only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long
time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired
me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had
molded it in silence for years, something resulted which might
be regarded as a creation of my own; and finally, all at once,
and almost instinctively, as if it had become ripe, I set it
down on paper. goethe
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from
emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape
from personality. But, of course, only those who have per-
sonality and emotions know what it means to want to escape
from such things. t. s. eliot
[ 282 ]
Writers and Readers
Reason no more makes a poem than salt makes a dish, but it
is a constituent of a poem as salt is a constituent of a dish.
HEBBEL
Take a commonplace, clean and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and spon- taneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job.
COCTEAU
When writing poetry, it is not inspiration that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of in- spiration. PAVESE
A man is a poet if the difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.
VALERY
To write regular verses . . . destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts. valery
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well. valery
Skilled verse is the art of a profound skeptic. valery
The truest poetry is the most feigning. Shakespeare
A comic bard ought to look at life as a masked ball in which a prince isn't offended in the least when a wigmaker in domino crosses in front of him. Stendhal
Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.
[ 283 ]
MALLARME
The Arts
The Soil intended for Pierian Seeds
Must be well purg’d, from rank Pedantick Weeds .
Apollo starts, and all Parnassus shakes.
At the rude rumbling Baralipton makes.
For none have been with Admiration read.
But who (beside their Learning) were Well-bred,
ROSCOMMON
Beware what Spirit rages in your Breast;
For ten Inspir’d ten thousand are possest.
Thus make the proper Use of each Extream,
And write with Fury , but correct with Phleam.
ROSCOMMON
It is a great fault, in descriptive poetry, to describe everything.
POPE
How very unlike Ireland this whole place is. I only felt at home once — when I came to a steep lane with a stream in the mid- dle. The rest one noticed with a foreign eye, picking out the stranger and not, as in one's own country, the familiar things for interest — the fault, by the way, of all poetry about coun- tries not the writer's own. yeats
Poetic fire sank low in me When it was Good I sought to see.
But up it flamed, up to the sky.
When it was Evil I had to fly.
GOETHE
The crying of a nice child is ugly; so in bad verses you may recognize that the author is a nice man. chekhov
The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature with Humanity, rejoices in its meas- ureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows.
BERENSON
[ 284 ]
Writers and Readers
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet
spends his life patiently trying to untie. cocteau
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mis-
take it for a universal one. hannah arendt
Poetry avoids the last illusion of prose, which so gently some-
times and at others so passionately pretends that things are
thus and thus. In poetry they are also thus and thus, but be-
cause the arrangement of the lines, the pattern within the
whole, will have it so. Exquisitely leaning toward an implied
untruth, prose persuades us that we can trust our natures to
know things as they are; ostentatiously faithful to its own na-
ture, poetry assures us that we cannot — we know only as we
can. WILLIAMS
Beauty lives by rhymes. Double a deformity is a beauty.
THOREATJ
It is unwise in a poet to goad the sleeping lion of laughter.
CHESTERTON
Reputation is much oftener lost than gained by verse.
DR. FULLER
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. JOUBERT
Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse will not hold.
SHENSTONE
Insects sting, not in malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood, not our pain.
NIETZSCHE
[ 285 ]
The Arts
How much more flattering to see a critic turn disparaging from
malice and spite than lenient from cliquishness. gide
The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how
to believe on insufficient evidence. samuel butler (ii)
It is the proper province ... of an inferior to criticize and
advise. The best possible critic of the Iliad would be, ipso facto ,
and by virtue of that very character, incapable of being the
author of it. francis
I regard reviews as a kind of infant's disease to which newborn
books are subject. lichtenberg
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments
scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more in-
teresting than the text. The world is one of these books.
SANTAYANA
A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
THOREAU
The test of a book (to a writer) is if it makes a space in which, quite naturally, you can say what you want to say.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
I have had more pleasure in reading the adventures of a novel than I ever had in my own. hazlitt
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased
with bad. Emerson
[286]
Writers and Readers
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not
read them. samuel butler (ii)
All good things are powerful stimulants to life, even every
good book which is written against life. Nietzsche
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy,
monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real
good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. “Imaginative lit-
erature/' therefore, is either boring or immoral or a mixture
of both. SIMONE WEIL
What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and
passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another
reads playfully. valery
Sperone-Speroni explains very well why a writer's form of ex-
pression may seem quite clear to him yet obscure to the
reader: the reader is advancing from language to thought, the
writer from thought to language. chamfort
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to
enjoy life or better to endure it. dr. Johnson
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
With his own tongue still edifies his ears.
And always list'ning to himself appears.
POPE
Any book which is at all important should be reread im- mediately. SCHOPENHAUER
[ 287 ]
The Arts
Sometimes I read a book with pleasure and detest the author.
SWIFT
One only reads well when one reads with some quite personal goal in mind. It may be to acquire some power. It can be out of hatred for the author. val£ry
Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none,
and the best cannot be expected to go quite right.
DR. JOHNSON
In the library of a young prince, the solemn folios are not much rumpled; books of a lighter digestion have the dog's ears. Halifax
A book is a minor: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect
an apostle to look out. lichtenberg
At least be sure that you go to the author to get at his
meaning, not to find yours. ruskin
The reason why so few good books are written is that so
few people who can write know anything. bagehot
To pass judgment on people or on characters in a book is
to make silhouettes of them. pavese
[ 288 ]
Sights and Sounds
Blowing is not playing the flute; you must make use of your
fingers. goethe
By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique; but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.
WALTER
Musical modes are nowhere altered without changes in the most important laws of the state. damon of Athens
Your ears will always lead you right, but you must know why.
WEBERN
I am inclined to think that a hunt for folk songs is better than a manhunt of the heroes who are so highly extolled.
BEETHOVEN
It takes no more energy to write fortissimo than to write piano , or universe than garden. val£ry
Music has many resemblances to algebra. novalis
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the drafts- man gives geometry its freedom. cocteatj
Music is essentially useless, as life is. Santayana
Music is the brandy of the damned.
[289 ]
SHAW
The Arts
In opera everything is based upon the not-true.
TCHAIKOVSKY
In opera the text must be the obedient daughter of the music.
MOZART
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.
ASCRIBED TO BOTH BARRETT AND BOOTH
The most difficult character in comedy is the fool, and he
who plays the part must be no simpleton. Cervantes
As a painter, I become more lucid when confronted by nature.
CEZANNE
Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
HAZLITT
Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree
of beauty. shenstone
Query, whether beauty does not as much require an opposi-
tion of lines, as it does an harmony of colors? shenstone
We should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would
like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature,
communicate everything I have to say in sketches.
GOETHE
Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry
into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape
painting be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of
which pictures are but the experiments? constable
[ 290 ]
Sights and Sounds
In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of
the false. degas
One line alone has no meaning; a second one is needed to
give it expression. Delacroix
There has never been a boy painter, nor can there be. The
art requires a long apprenticeship, being mechanical as well
as intellectual. constable
The less an artifact interests our eye as imitation, the more
it must delight our eye as a pattern, and an art of symbols
always evolves a language of decoration. clark
Communication of all kinds is like painting — a compromise
with impossibilities. samuel butler (ii)
He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without
being a master of drawing is an impostor. blare
The artist who always paints the same scene pleases the
public for the sole reason that it recognizes him with ease
and thinks itself a connoisseur. stevens
I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do
as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but
not too great a distance. How great? Guess. pascal
The only good copies are those that reveal what is silly in
the bad originals. la Rochefoucauld
[ 291 ]
The Arts
Servile copying is the great merit of copying. blake
Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The professional portrait painter is dragged by the nature of his work along a diagonal resultant. If one side of his triangle may be said to “pull painter,” the other may be said to “pull duchess.” The hypotenuse is what we know.
SICKERT
One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person one knows.
GOETHE
If you may not treat pictorially the ways of men and women, and their resultant babies, as one enchanted comedy or trag- edy, human and de moeurs , then artists must needs draw inanimate objects, picturesque, if possible. We must affect to be thrilled by scaffolding or seduced by oranges.
SICKERT
Taste is the death of a painter. He has all his work cut out for him, observing and recording. His poetry is the inter- pretation of ready-made life. He has no business to have time for preferences. sickert
The plastic arts are gross arts, dealing joyously with gross
material facts. They call, in their servants, for a robust
stomach and a great power of endurance, and while they will
flourish in the scullery or on the dunghill, they fade at a
breath from the drawing room. Stay! I had forgot. We have
a use for the drawing room— to caricature it! sickert
I have made a sketch of him so that, on the Day of Judgment,
he can the more easily find his body again. lichtenberg
[292 ]
Sights and Sounds
One always has to spoil a picture a little bit, in order to
finish it. DELACROIX
An artist may visit a museum, but only a pedant can live
there. santayana
We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art
as with exalted personages — stand quietly before them and
wait till they speak to us. Schopenhauer
A museum . . . oftenest induces the feeling that nothing
could ever have been young. pater
That which, perhaps, hears more silly remarks than anything
else in the world, is a picture in a museum.
THE BROTHERS GONCOURT
It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language. anonymous
[295]
STATES AND GOVERNMENTS
Politics and Power
All governments are obscure and invisible. bacon
A general idea is always a danger to the existing order.
WHITEHEAD
It is impossible to doubt the effect of any vigorous effort
for the immediate abolition of the only social system that
men know. It may be better that the heavens should fall,
but it is folly to ignore the fact that they will fall.
WHITEHEAD
To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a
government to have the will or even the power; the habits,
ideas, and passions of the time must lend themselves to their
committal. tocqueville
It is a bad witness to the goodness of a regime when people
begin to praise it only after they have ceased to believe in
the possibility of its restoration. tocqueville
I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry
me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry
for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means —
except by getting off his back. tolstoi
[ 297 ]
States and Governments
It is one of the dangerous characteristics of the sort of in-
formation supplied by secret agents that it becomes rarer
and less explicit as the peril increases and the need for
information becomes greater. Doubting the duration of the
government which employs them, and already afraid of its
successor, such agents either scarcely speak at all or keep
absolute silence. tocqueville
Harsh is the law, but it is certain.
VICO
Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by
gas. GLADSTONE
Dullness is decent in the Church and State. dryden
The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses
force. pascal
The combination of a repressive political order with a per-
missive moral order is not unheard of in human history.
RIEFF
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
E. BURKE
Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only be
had in another. pascal
The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known: the
tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny
that lasts. wilde
[ 298 ]
Politics and Power
States decree the most illustrious rewards, not to him who
catches a thief, but to him who kills a tyrant. Aristotle
Tyrants are always assassinated too late; that is their great
excuse. cioran
Tyranny over a man is not tyranny: it is rebellion, for man
is royal. Chesterton
It is far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than to
think. HANNAH ARENDT
Unanimity is almost always an indication of servitude.
REMUSAT
Being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just. pascal
Despotism tempered by assassination — there is our Magna
Charta. anonymous Russian
The magistrate has a right to enforce what he thinks; and
he who is conscious of the truth has the right to suffer. I
am afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth,
but by persecution on the one hand, and enduring it on the
Other. DR. JOHNSON
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious
laws so effective as their stringent execution. grant
Any class is all right if it will only let others be so.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 299 ]
States and Governments
All the cities of the earth should rise up against the man who
ruins one. landor
The mode of government is incomparably more important
for a nation than the form of state. kant
It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding that
it can hold men's hearts by hopes when it cannot by satis-
faction. BACON
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it
blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds
ill will and suspicion — it is an evil government. hoffer
It is muddleheaded to say, I am in favor of this kind of
political regime rather than that: what one really means is,
I prefer this kind of police. cioran
Foreign policy demands scarcely any of those qualities which
are peculiar to a democracy; on the contrary it calls for the
perfect use of almost all those qualities in which a democracy
is deficient. Democracy is favorable to the increase of the
internal resources of a state, it diffuses wealth and comfort,
and fortifies the respect for law in all classes of society, but
it can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an
important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work
out its execution in spite of serious obstacles. It cannot
combine its measures with secrecy or await their conse-
quences with patience. These are qualities which are more
characteristic of an individual or an aristocracy.
TOCQUEVILLE
[ 300 ]
Politics and Power
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into
a position of power, corrupt power. shaw
It is always observable that the physical and exact sciences
are the last to suffer under despotisms. dana
In general, despite all the talk about freedom, peoples and
governments demand unlimited state power internally.
BURCKHARDT
Lawgivers or revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty
at the same time are either utopian dreamers or charlatans.
GOETHE
No government can be long secure without a formidable
opposition. disraeli
Power is so apt to be insolent, and liberty to be saucy, that
they are very seldom upon good terms. Halifax
In the tumult of civil discord the laws of society lose their
force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity.
GIBBON
Wretches hang that jurymen may dine. pope
In France we threaten the man who rings the alarm bell and
leave him in peace who starts the fire. chamfort
The triumph of demagogies is short-lived. But the ruins are
eternal. peguy
[ 301 ]
States and Governments
If the private rights of an individual are violated in a period
when the human mind is fully impressed with the importance
and sanctity of such rights, the injury done is confined to the
individual whose rights are infringed; but to violate such
rights at the present day is deeply to corrupt the manners
of the nation and to put the whole community in jeopardy,
because the very notion of this kind of right among us tends
constantly to be impaired and lost. tocqueville
Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness. lec
Those who give the first shock to a state are the first over-
whelmed in its ruin. montaigne
Republics come to an end through luxury; monarchies through
poverty. Montesquieu
Who shall stand guard to the guards themselves? juvenal
The accursed power which stands on Priviledge
And goes with Women and Champagne and Bridge,
Broke, and Democracy resumed her reign
Which goes with Bridge and Women and Champagne.
BELLOC
Dinners have become a means of government, and the fates of nations are decided at a banquet. brillat-savarin
The notion of a farseeing and despotic statesman, who can
lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by
the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no
support. bagehot
[ 302 ]
Politics and Power
Many even of those who desire to form aristocratical govern-
ments make a mistake, not only in giving too much power
to the rich, but in attempting to overreach the people. There
comes a time when out of a false good there arises a true
evil, since the encroachments of the rich are more destructive
to the constitution than those of the people. Aristotle
A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
BLAKE
Despotism or unlimited sovereignty is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junta, and a single emperor. j. q. adams
Every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks
war by making peace. For even they who intentionally inter-
rupt the peace in which they are living have not hatred of
peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them
better. And in the case of sedition, when men have separated
themselves from the community, they do not effect what
they wish, unless they maintain some kind of peace with
their fellow conspirators. saint augustine
If you cry “Forward!” you must without fail make plain in what direction to go. Don’t you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in directions precisely opposite? chekhov
Terrorism is essentially the rage of literati in its last stage.
BURCKHARDT
Military glory pure and simple withers in time into mere recognition by specialists and military historians.
BURCKHARDT
States and Governments
A state in which the law is powerless to punish a thief, or
in which society is unable to restrict the action of the govern-
ment, are equally opposed to the notion of polity. acton
There is only one way of speaking well from the tribune,
and that is to be fully persuaded as you get into it that you
are the most intelligent man in the world. anonymous
No state at war with another state should engage in hostilities
of such a kind as to render mutual confidence impossible
when peace will have been made. kant
Though men, nations, and causes are so aggressive, in the
long run everybody at least wants to see everybody else sub-
jected to the rules of a civilized world. Butterfield
There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion.
By persuading others, we convince ourselves. junius
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. henry adams
The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world
Of thought. CHAPMAN
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rotten-
ness begins in his conduct. Jefferson
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world did
not those who have long practiced perfidy grow faithless to
each other. dr. Johnson
[ 304 ]
Politics 2nd Power
Injustice cannot reign if the community does not furnish a
due supply of unjust agents. spencer
Complete publicity makes it absolutely impossible to govern.
No one has understood that better than the daily press; for
no power has watched more carefully over the secret of its
whole organization, who its contributors are, and its real
aims, etc., as the daily press, which then continually cries
out that the government should be quite public. Quite right;
the intention of the press was to do away with government
— and then itself govern, and that is why it safeguarded the
secrecy which is necessary in order to be able to — govern.
KIERKEGAARD
Our politicians are like the Greek reciprocals ( alleloin ) which are wanting in the nominative singular and all subjective cases. They can only be thought of in the plural and pos- sessive cases. KIERKEGAARD
He was a power politically fer years, but he never got prom-
inent enough f have his speeches garbled. kin hubbard
State business is a cruel trade; good-nature is a bungler in it.
HALIFAX
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. p&guy
The dappled deer is said to see the wind; your statesman
only sees which way it blows. hurnand
At Court, people embrace without acquaintance, serve one
another without friendship, and injure one another without
hatred. chesterfield
[ 305 ]
States and Governments
Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment,
governs them. chesterfield
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to
get the most feathers with the least hissing.
ASCRIBED TO COLBERT
There is a demand today for men who can make wrong appear right. Terence
The dispensing of injustice is always in the right hands.
LEC
Of what matter whether Titus or Tiberius occupy the throne, when every minister is a Sejanus? chamfort
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest
ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
EMERSON
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. bacon
One constantly sees a political party exaggerating its feelings
in order to embarrass its opponents, and the latter, in order
to avoid the trap, pretending to sentiments which they do not
feel. TOCQUEVILLE
The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
This is because, in party politics as in other matters, it is
the crowd who dictates the language, and the crowd re-
linquishes the ideas it has been given more readily than
the words it has learned. tocqueville
[ 306 ]
Politics and Power
Political parties never know each other: they approach, touch,
seize, but never see each other. tocqueville
Political parties are constantly deceived because they always
only think of the pleasure they themselves derive from the
speech of their great orator, and never of the dangerous excite-
ment he arouses in their opponents. tocqueville
All parties, without exception, when they seek for power are
varieties of absolutism. prudhon
Cease being the slave of a party and you become its deserter.
SIMON
The party system is arranged on the same principle as a three-legged race: the principle that union is not always strength and is never activity. Chesterton
A party which is not afraid of letting culture, business, and
welfare go to ruin completely can be omnipotent for a while.
BURCKHARDT
The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief. burckhardt
The dismay and fury of the men who depend for their living
on the dwindling horse traffic in a town is natural, and excites
sympathy and pity. But these are unfortunately not the men
whom it would be useful to elect on a traffic board for the
consideration of the future lines on which an electrical sys-
tem should be laid down and linked up. sickert
[ 307 ]
States and Governments
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foun-
dation of friendships. tocqueville
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by
editors. Emerson
For those who govern, the first thing required is indifference
to newspapers. thiers
The real object is to vote for the good politician, not for the
kind-hearted or agreeable man: the mischief is just the same
to the country whether I am smiled into a corrupt choice or
frowned into a corrupt choice. Sydney smith
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for
appointment by the corrupt few. shaw
Three systems of colonization: the English, colonies with
colonials; the French, colonies without colonials; the German,
colonials without colonies. anonymous
A nation cannot be an object of charity. But a country can
be one — as an environment bearing traditions which are
eternal. Every country can be that. simone weil
The real science of political economy, which has yet to be
distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from
witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which
teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead
to life. RUSKIN
[ 308 ]
Liberty and Union
In every party there is someone who, by his over-devout
expression of party principles, provokes the rest to defect.
NIETZSCHE
Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever deliberately commit the least act of in- justice without having to pay the penalty for it. thoreau
Next to its cultural habits, the thing which a nation is least
apt to change is its civil legislation. tocqueville
Liberty and Union
It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overleap
them. METTERNICH
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an element without
which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly
to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because
it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the annihilation
of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to
fire its destructive agency. madison
There is no generalized idea of liberty, and it is hard to form
one, since the liberty of a particular man is exercised only
at the expense of other people's. Formerly liberty was called
privilege; all things considered, that is perhaps its true name.
GOURMONT
[ 309 ]
States and Governments
We should not let ourselves be burned for our opinions them-
selves, since we can never be quite sure of them; but perhaps
we might for the right to hold and alter them. nietzsche
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted
natures, the unselfish and the intelligent, may begin a move-
ment — but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders
of a revolution. They are its victims. conrad
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken
together, would be my standard of a statesman. t. burke
Democratic contrivances are quarantine measures against that
ancient plague, the lust for power: as such, they are very
necessary and very boring. nietzsche
Great is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have
a moderate and sufficient property. Aristotle
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common
opinions and uncommon abilities. bagehot
Constitutional statesmen ajre obliged, not only to employ arguments which they do not think conclusive, but likewise to defend opinions which they do not believe to be true.
bagehot
He is not the best statesman who is the greatest doer, but he who sets others doing with the greatest success.
ANONYMOUS
In the contest between ease and liberty, the first hath gen- erally prevailed. Halifax
[ 310 ]
Liberty and Union
If none were to have liberty but those who understand
what it is, there would not be many freed men in the world.
HALIFAX
There is always a certain meanness in the argument of con- servatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.
EMERSON
It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped. emerson
Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more
terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances.
EMERSON
It is essential to the triumph of reform that it shall never succeed. hazlitt
The anarchist ... is disappointed with the future as well
as with the past. Chesterton
A respectable vague liberalism, though it often disappears
with the first gray hair, marriage, and professional success,
does nevertheless raise a man's character. herzen
The traces of national origin are a matter of expression even
more than of feature. henry james
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great
men — and then get around them. nietzsche
No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however
generous at heart. ruskin
[ 311 ]
States and Governments
The nations which have put mankind most in their debt have
been small states — Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan
England. dean inge
Unhappy the Juvenal whom Rome greets with amusement;
unhappier still, the Rome that can be amused by a Juvenal.
FATHER KNOX
Only the history of free peoples merits our attention; that of men under despotisms is simply a collection of anecdotes.
CHAMFORT
Aristocracies often commit very tyrannical and inhuman ac- tions, but they rarely entertain groveling thoughts; and they show a kind of haughty contempt for petty pleasures, even when they indulge in them. tocqueville
By nature, aristocracies are too liable to narrow the scope
of human perfectability, democracies to expand it beyond
reason. tocqueville
Forms become more necessary as the government becomes
more active and powerful, and private persons become more
indolent and feeble. By their nature, democratic nations
stand more in need of forms than other nations, and respect
them less. tocqueville
They that are discontented under monarchy call it tyrrany, and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, hobbes
As a rule, democracies have very confused or erroneous ideas on external affairs, and generally solve outside questions only for internal reasons. tocqueville
[ 312 ]
Liberty and Union
It should never be forgotten by leaders of democratic nations
that nothing except the love and habit of freedom can main-
tain an advantageous contest with the love and habit of
physical well-being. I can conceive of nothing better pre-
pared for subjection in case of defeat than a democratic
people without free institutions. tocqueville
I think that democratic communities have a natural taste
for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it,
and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality
their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible; they
call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that,
they will call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty,
servitude, barbarism, but they will not endure aristocracy.
TOCQUEVILLE
A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible. russell
In times of peace, the well-being of small nations is un-
doubtedly more general and complete; but they are apt to
suffer more acutely from the calamities of war than great
empires. If none but small nations existed, I do not doubt
that mankind would be more happy and more free; but the
existence of great nations is unavoidable. It profits a state
but little to be affluent and free if it is perpetually exposed
to be pillaged or subjected. tocqueville
The patriotism of antiquity becomes in most modem so-
cieties a caricature. In antiquity, it developed naturally from
the whole condition of a people, its youth, its situation, its
culture — with us it is an awkward imitation. Our life de-
mands, not separation from other nations, but constant inter-
course; our city life is not that of the ancient city-state.
GOETHE
[ 313 ]
States and Governments
The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs
more than it is worth. macaulay
What scoundrels we would be if we did for ourselves what
we stand ready to do for Italy. cavour
You’11 never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. shaw
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. dr. Johnson
Liberty is generally established with difficulty in the midst
of storms; it is perfected by civil discord; and its benefits
cannot be appreciated until it is already old. tocqueville
People and Princes
Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
PENN
If you ask me, “Why should not the people make their own laws?” I need only ask you, “Why should not the people write their own plays?” They cannot. It is much easier to write a good play than to make a good law. And there are not a hundred men in the world who can write a play good enough to stand the daily wear and tear as long as a law must.
SHAW
[3141
People and Princes
The masses of men are very difficult to excite on bare grounds
of self-interest; most easy if a bold orator tells them con-
fidently they are wronged. bagehot
To succeed in chaining the crowd you must seem to wear
the same fetters. voltaire
The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose
liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale,
is much stupidity. bagehot
The people are to be taken in very small doses. Emerson
While the natural instincts of democracy induce the people
to reject distinguished citizens as their rulers, an instinct no
less strong induces able men to retire from the political arena,
in which it is difficult to retain their independence, or to
advance without becoming servile. tocqueville
The people are that part of the state that does not know
what it wants. hegel
When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get
anything by their victory but new masters. Halifax
The liberty of writing, like all other liberties, is most formi-
dable when it is a novelty. A people who have never been
accustomed to hearing state affairs discussed in front of them
place implicit confidence in the first tribune who presents
himself. tocqueville
The people cannot see, but they can feel.
[ 315 ]
HARRINGTON
States and Governments
The people are deceived by names, but not by things.
HARRINGTON
The people will ever suspect the remedies for the diseases
of the state where they are wholly excluded from seeing how
they are prepared. Halifax
I do not think a single people can be cited, since human
society began, that has, of its own free will and by its own
exertions, created an aristocracy within its bosom.
TOCQUEVILLE
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
DR. JOHNSON
Until its decline in the twentieth century, the territory of the nation-state offered all classes a substitute for the privately owned home of which the class of the poor had been deprived.
HANNAH ARENDT
When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
ARISTOTLE
The public good requires us to betray, and to lie, and to
massacre: let us resign this commission to those who are
more pliable, and more obedient. montaigne
The tumultuous love of the populace must be seized and
enjoyed in its first transports . . . ; it will not keep.
chesterfield
Democracy is Lovelace and the people is Clarissa.
JOHN ADAMS
[ 316 ]
People and Princes
The nobility, say its members, is the intermediary between
the King and the People. . . . Quite; just as the hounds
are the intermediary between the men and the hares.
CHAMFORT
How small, of all that human hearts endure.
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure.
DR. JOHNSON
Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
SHAW
In absolute monarchies the king often has great virtues, but the courtiers are invariably servile. tocoueville
Had he never been emperor, no one would have doubted his
ability to reign. tacitus
Princes had need, in tender matters and ticklish times, to
beware what they say; especially in those short speeches
which flv abroad like darts, and are thought to be shot out of
their secret intentions. For as to large discourses, they are
flat things and not much noted. I have remarked that some
witty and sharp speeches, which have fallen from princes,
have given fire to seditions. bacon
A prince who will not undergo the difficulty of understanding
must undergo the danger of trusting. Halifax
Men are so unwilling to displease a prince that it is as dan-
gerous to inform him right as to serve him wrong. Halifax
Power always has most to apprehend from its own illusions.
Monarchs have incurred more hazards from the follies of
their own that have grown up under the adulation of parasites,
than from the machinations of their enemies. cooper
[ 317 ]
States and Governments
It is safer for a prince to judge of men by what they do to
one another than what they do to him. Halifax
They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horseman-
ship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will
throw a prince as soon as his groom. jonson
Princes have this remaining of humanity, that they think
themselves obliged not to make war without a reason. Their
reasons are, indeed, not always very satisfactory.
DR. JOHNSON
What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle. E, burke
Children and subjects ... are much seldomer in the wrong
than parents and kings. chesterfield
[ 518 ]
c°>
E LIFE OF THE MI
c^S)
Truth and Error
A thing is not truth till it is so strongly believed in that the
believer is convinced that its existence does not depend
upon him. chapman
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain:
either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be
training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher
tomorrow. Nietzsche
He who does not know truth at sight is unworthy of her
notice. blake
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
NIETZSCHE
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
believed. blake
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an
honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes
to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually
unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable, renas-
cent errors. peguy
The Life of the Mind
On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep. Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe;
And what the hills suddennes resists, winne so.
DONNE
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstititions. t. h. huxley
Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the
perfume of hints and suggestions. whitehead
There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad than . . . an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable. hazlitt
Truth generally is kindness, but where the two diverge and collide, kindness should override truth.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm. la Rochefoucauld
The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by
all who investigate it is what we mean by the truth, and the
object represented in this opinion is the real. peirce
Two elements are needed to form a truth — a fact and an
abstraction. gourmont
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute
truth. SAMUEL butler (ii)
[ 322 ]
Truth and Error
A system-grinder hates the truth.
EMERSON
Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.
CHESTERTON
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. conan doyle
It is good to express a matter in two ways simultaneously so
as to give it both a right foot and a left. Truth can stand on
one leg, to be sure; but with two it can walk and get about.
NIETZSCHE
It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.
GRACIAN
Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true. Nietzsche
To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.
NOVALIS
We have to change truth a little in order to remember it.
SANTAYANA
I have an instinct for loving the truth; but only an instinct.
VOLTAIRE
Truth is such a fly-away, such a sly-boots, so untranslatable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as
light. EMERSON
Truth is a clumsy scullery maid who breaks the dishes as
she washes them up. kraus
[ 323 ]
The Life of the Mind
There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes
a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a
great many more truths than he demonstrates.
TOCQUEVILLE
All perception of truth is a perception of an analogy; we
reason from our hands to our heads. thoreau
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace with which
one accompanies it tells the truth. nietzsche
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than
that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For
the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of
experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course
a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false
One. WHITEHEAD
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those
who hear it. william james
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of con-
tradiction a sign of truth. pascal
We have become so democratic in our habits of thought
that we are convinced that truth is determined through a
plebiscite of facts. heller
Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that
reunite. Islanded between the arms, the inhabitants argue
for a lifetime as to which is the main river. connolly
[ 324 ]
Truth and Error
The comprehension of truth calls for higher powers than the
defense of error. goethe
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction
is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial
to it. CHESTERTON
The loss of certainty of truth has ended in a new, entirely
unprecedented zeal for truthfulness — as though man could
afford to be a liar only so long as he was certain of the
unchallengeable existence of truth and objective reality,
which surely would survive and defeat all his lies.
HANNAH ARENDT
Truth is beautiful. Without doubt; and so are lies.
EMERSON
Remember: one lie does not cost you one truth but the truth. HEBBEL
To disavow an error is to invent retroactively. goethe
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until
we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue state-
ment WOuld be. WILLIAM JAMES
All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth.
Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not
following another truth. pascal
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free
to combat it. jefferson
[ 325 ]
The Life of the Mind
Experience does not err; it is only your judgment that errs
in expecting from her what is not in her power.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Error itself may be happy chance.
WHITEHEAD
The honest liar is the man who tells the truth about his old
lies; who says on Wednesday, “I told a magnificent lie on
Monday/' Chesterton
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
NIETZSCHE
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them. Chesterton
The quaclc is a man whose sentiment is not satisfied until he
discovers something that is not there. If he should find a true
thing, it would coalesce with the rest of truth and somewhat
defeat his ambition; he would never be satisfied with it.
CHAPMAN
There are visual errors in time as well as in space. proust
When we return from error, it is through knowing that we return. saint augustine
Error has turned beasts into men. Will truth be able to turn
men back into beasts? nietzsche
They who are engrossed in the rapid realization of an extrav-
agant hope tend to view facts as something base and unclean.
Facts are counterrevolutionary. hoffer
[ 326 ]
Opinions and Beliefs
A hatred of mediocrity ill becomes a philosopher. . . .
Exactly because he is the exception, he must protect the rule.
NIETZSCHE
The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age.
NIETZSCHE
Every great philosophy is ... a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography. nietzsche
It takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very
little elevation of life. Emerson
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the
sensible man hardly anything. goethe
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
GRACIAN
There is somebody wiser than any of us, and that is everybody.
napoleon
Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows
with knowledge. goethe
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a
civilized man. o. w. holmes, jr.
Men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased, against their will. dr. Johnson
[ 327 ]
The Life of the Mind
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze but by tone
and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
SAMUEL BUTLER (ll)
It is always easy to be on the negative side. If a man were not to deny that there is salt on the table, you could not reduce him to an absurdity. dr. Johnson
The majority of those who flatter themselves on their knowl-
edge of the human heart do not separate their boasted insight
from their unfavorable feeling about humanity. . . . Noth-
ing indeed imparts a psychological air so much as an habitual
attitude of depreciation, valery
To deny A is to put A behind bars.
VALERY
Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute be-
longs to pathology. nietzsche
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more
light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
O. W. HOLMES, JR.
Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs. Let not the unwary reader think me flippant for say- ing so; it was Plato, in his solemn old age, who said it.
SANTAYANA
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail. o. w. holmes, jr.
The idealist is incorrigible — if he is turned out of his heaven,
he makes an ideal of his hell. nietzsche
[ 328 ]
Opinions and Beliefs
I'll not listen to reason. . . . Reason always means what
someone else has got to say. mrs. gaskell
It seemed so simple when one was young and new ideas were
mentioned not to grow red in the face and gobble.
L. P. SMITH
He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but it seemed as if all of it
had gone down the wrong way. lichtenberg
We are ungrateful to the intellects of the past; or rather, like
children we take it for granted that somebody must supply
us with our supper and our ideas. chapman
There are boxes in the mind with labels on them: To study
on a favorable occasion; Never to be thought about; Useless
to go into further; Contents unexamined; Pointless business;
Urgent; Dangerous; Delicate; Impossible; Abandoned; Re-
served; For others; My forte; etc. valery
Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature;
they can offer no reason or “guess/ 7 but they exhibit the
solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question
arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. thoreau
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We
must not study ourselves while having an experience.
NIETZSCHE
We suffer less from having had to renounce our desires when
we have trained our imagination to see the past as ugly.
NIETZSCHE
[ 329 ]
The Lite of the Mind
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone
of voice m which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to
US. NIETZSCHE
Many things are not believed because their current explana-
tion is not believed. nietzsche
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered
long ago. NIETZSCHE
By nature's kindly disposition, most questions which it is
beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
SANTAYANA
If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself upon a
plank wider than actually necessary, but hanging over a prec-
ipice, his imagination will prevail, though his reason convince
him of his safety. pascal
Everybody calls “clear" those ideas which have the same
degree of confusion as his own. proust
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the
limits of the world. Schopenhauer
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence
seems to him. Schopenhauer
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
t. h. HUXLEY
[ 330 ]
Opinions and Beliefs
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the
absolute rejection of authority. t. h. huxley
Tolerance meant, at worst, sullenly putting up with what one
could not alter; at best, willingly accepting what one could
not alter. It was a little limited by the fact that “to tolerate”
was always considered as an active and hardly ever as a
passive verb. The idea that others had, so to speak, to “put
up with” oneself was rarely practiced deeply and consistently.
WILLIAMS
We do not need the learned man to teach us the important things. We all know the important things, though we all violate and neglect them. Gigantic industry, abysmal knowl- edge, are needed for the discovery of the tiny things — the things that seem hardly worth the trouble. chesterton
Human learning has often been an instrument, not a source,
of hostility to religion. acton
In a war of ideas it is people who get killed. lec
The felicity of princes and great persons had long since
turned to rudeness and barbarism, if the poverty of learning
had not kept up civility and honor of life. bacon
Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. bacon
As it asketh some knowledge to demand a question not im-
pertinent, so it requireth some sense to make a wish not
absurd. bacon
[ 331 ]
The Life of the Mind
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know be-
cause we don't want to know. aldous huxley
Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt.
ANTOINETTE DESHOULIEE.ES
A man in the wrong may more easily be convinced than one
half right. Emerson
Curiosity is almost, almost, the definition of frivolity.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
Perhaps we never hate any opinion or can do until we have impersonated it. coleridge
It is a golden rule not to judge men by their opinions but
rather by what their opinions make of them.
lichtenberg
People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true. Santayana
Some men plant opinions they seem to pull up.
ENGLISH PROVERB
To change his opinions is for one nature an expression of purity of mind, like somebody who changes his clothing; but for another nature it is only an expression of his vanity.
NIETZSCHE
Both sides of a question do not belong to the poor old ques-
tion at all, but to the opposing views which bedevil it.
HASKINS
[ 332 ]
Opinions and Beliefs
To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into
them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own
eyes. locke
Man is what he believes.
CHEKHOV
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
To one thing only does he not adapt himself: to being not
clear in his own mind what he believes about things.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
A thing “is” whatever it gives us least trouble to think it is. There is no other “is” than this. samuel butler (ii)
There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believ-
ing, however often they are made. Chesterton
The history of Christendom would have been far happier
if we all had remembered one rule of intelligence — not to
believe a thing more strongly at the end of a bitter argument
than at the beginning, not to believe it with the energy of
the opposition rather than one's own. williams
“In my heart I have determined on it.” And one is even in-
clined to point to one's breast as one says it. Psychologically
this way of speaking should be taken seriously. Why should
it be taken less seriously than the assertion that belief is a
state of mind? Wittgenstein
If there were a verb meaning “to believe falsely,” it would
not have any significant first person, present indicative.
WITTGENSTEIN
[ 333 ]
The Life of the Mind
There might actually occur a case where we should say, “This
man believes he is pretending.” Wittgenstein
There can never be any reason for rejecting one instinctive
belief except that it clashes with others. It is of course pos-
sible that all or any of our beliefs may be mistaken, and there-
fore all ought to be held with at least some element of doubt.
But we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the
ground of some other belief. russell
A fool hath no dialogue within himself, the first thought
carrieth him without the reply of a second. Halifax
Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to
believe in what they understand. lec
The brute necessity of believing something so long as life
lasts does not justify any belief in particular. santayana
No man does anything from a single motive. Coleridge
The chief phenomenon in our days is the sense of the pro-
visional. BURCKHARDT
He who thinks much and to some purpose easily forgets his
own experiences but not the thoughts which each experience
provoked. Nietzsche
Everything seems possible when we are absolutely helpless or
absolutely powerful — and both states stimulate our credulity.
HOFFER
[ 334 ]
Opinions and Beliefs
One mood is the natural critic of another. When possessed
with a strong feeling on any subject foreign to the one I may
be writing on, I know very well what of good and what of bad
I have written on the latter. thoreau
The “silly” question is the first intimation of some totally new
development. whitehead
It is not true that X never thinks. On the contrary, he is
always thinking — about something else. bradley
The people who are most bigoted are the people who have
no convictions at all. Chesterton
There is no skeptic who does not feel that men have doubted
before, but no man who is in love thinks that anyone has
been in love before. Chesterton
We fear something before we hate it; a child who fears
noises becomes a man who hates noise. connoixy
Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I do.
Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and college
and then insist on going into the Church or take to drinking
or marry their mother's maid. Samuel butler (ii)
Mere financial dishonesty is of very little importance in the
history of civilization. Who cares whether Caesar stole or
Caesar Borgia cheated? . . . The real evil that follows . . .
a commercial dishonesty so general as ours is the intellectual
dishonesty it generates. chapman
[ 325 ]
The Life of the Mind
To make our idea of morality center on forbidden acts is
to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments
of our fellow men a secret element of gusto. stevenson
A philosophical fashion catches on like a gastronomical fash-
ion: one can no more refute an idea than a sauce. cioran
Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who
you are. ortega y gasset
Reporting facts is the refuge of those who have no imagi-
nation. VAUVENARGUES
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
No one would be angry with a man for unintentionally mak- ing a mistake about a matter of fact; but if he perversely in- sists on spoiling your story in the telling of it, you want to kick him; and this is the reason why every philosopher and theologian is justly vexed with every other. Santayana
Games give pleasure but bear no fruit, and only that which
bears fruit is real. All games and all thoughts seek to exclude
the necessity of death, suffering, injustice, downfall. The
thinker turns the pangs of birth into causes, death into evolu-
tion. rosenstock-huessy
We play gladly and think gladly because in these activities we
feel ourselves masters of the situation: the space of play and
the space of thought are the two theaters of freedom.
rosenstock-huessy
[ 336 ]
Opinions 2nd Beliefs
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
DR. JOHNSON
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords. dr. Johnson
Pessimists as a rule live to a ripe old age. It is questionable if
a despairing view of the universe even impairs the digestion
as much as a single slice of new bread. lynd
At certain moments a single almost insignificant sorrow may,
by association, bring together all the little relicts of pain and
discomfort, bodily and mental, that we have endured even
from infancy. coleridge
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle
deliberation how it shall be spent. dr. Johnson
In wonder all philosophy began: in wonder it ends. . . .
But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance: the last
is the parent of adoration. coleridge
Very unlike a divine man would he be, who is unable to
count one, two, three, or to distinguish odd and even numbers.
PLATO
Materialists unwilling to admit the mysterious element of our nature make it all mysterious. coleridge
Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are
like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.
coleridge
[ 537 ]
The Life of the Mind
Be careful how you interpret the world: it is like that.
HELLER
Compromise is odious to passionate natures because it seems a surrender; and to intellectual natures because it seems a confusion. Santayana
I do not greatly care whether I have been right or wrong on
any point, but I care a good deal about knowing which of the
two I have been. samuel butler (ii)
Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness
to see one's equation written out. Santayana
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise
himself. Santayana
In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism
is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a
mushroom — for example, in senates and learned societies.
NIETZSCHE
To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic. Santayana
[ 338 ]
Reason and Thought
Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.
SANTAYANA
To know the world, one must construct it pavese
Give me matter and I will build a world from it; that is,
give me matter and I will show you how a world developed
from it kant
He who would rightly comprehend the world must be, now
Democritus, and now Heraclitus. silesius
Man was not bom to solve the problems of the universe, but
to put his finger on the problem and then to keep within
the limits of the comprehensible. goethe
Existence should be met on its own terms: we may dance a
round with it, and perhaps steal a kiss; but it tempts us only
to flout u$, not being dedicated to any constant love.
SANTAYANA
Logic is like the sword — those who appeal to it shall perish by it. Faith is appealing to the living God, and one may perish by that too, but somehow one would rather perish that way than the other, and one has got to perish sooner or later. samuel butler (ii)
You must see the infinite, i.e., the universal, in your particular,
or it is only gossip. o. w. holmes, jr.
[ 339 ]
The Life of the Mind
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the
answer is obvious. shaw
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual
as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking,
and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting
extinction by its rivals. t. h. huxley
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. blake
While we talk logic, we are unanswerable; but then, on the
other hand, the universal living scene of things is after all
as little a logical world as it is a poetical; and as it cannot
without violence be exalted into poetical perfection, neither
can it be attenuated into a logical formula. newman
A gloss on Descartes: Sometimes I think: and sometimes I am.
VALERY
What is now proved was once only imagined. blake
If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing
more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of
one's own opinions. mill
The man who sees the consistency in things is a wit. . . . The
man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist.
CHESTERTON
Analysis makes for unity, but not necessarily for goodness .
FREUD
[ 340 ]
Reason and Thought
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure
to pleasure, but from hope to hope. dr. Johnson
On proportion the classic whole depends. That whole has
a place for the romantic beginning; it puts the romantic into
its place certainly, and firmly keeps it there. But the anti-classic
has no place for any image at all — either of the beginning or
of the end, only for a makeshift. williams
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
EMERSON
Principles always become a matter of vehement discussion
when practice is at ebb. gissing
The man who listens to reason is lost: reason enslaves all
whose minds are not strong enough to master her. shaw
In an unreasonable age, a man's reason let loose would undo
him. HALIFAX
Synthetical reasoning, setting up as its goal some unattainable
abstraction, like an imaginary quantity in algebra, and com-
mencing its course with taking for granted some two assertions
which cannot be proved, from the union of these two assumed
truths produces a third assumption, and so on in an infinite
series, to the unspeakable benefit of the human intellect. The
beauty of this process is, that at every step it strikes out
into two branches, in a compound ratio of ramification; so
that you are perfectly sure of losing your way, and keeping
your mind in perfect health, by the perpetual exercise of
an interminable quest. peacock
[ 341 ]
The Life of the Mind
All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence. patmore
The world of reason is poor compared to the world of the
senses — until or, but, because, when, if, and, unless populate
it with endless possibilities. kaufmann
Man’s rational life consists in those moments in which re-
flection not only occurs but proves efficacious. Santayana
Reason is God’s gift; but so are the passions: reason is as
guilty as passion. newman
Reason can ascertain the profound difficulties of our condi-
tion; it cannot remove them. newman
Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make them
happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends
miserable. pascal
It is the triumph of reason to get on well with those who
possess none. voltaire
Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not of our side. Halifax
Most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively.
O. W. HOLMES, JR.
The method which begins by doubting in order to philos-
ophize is just as suited to its purpose as making a soldier lie
down in a heap in order to teach him to stand upright.
KIERKEGAARD
[ 342 ]
Reason and Thought
If I carried all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would
take care not to open it. fontenelle
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the
consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his
impulse. william james
Philosophy destroys itself when it indulges in brilliant feats
of explaining away. It is then trespassing with the wrong equip-
ment upon the field of particular sciences. Its ultimate appeal
is to the general consciousness of what in practice we experi-
ence. WHITEHEAD
If an angel were to tell us something of his philosophy, I do
believe some of his propositions would sound like 2x2= 13.
LICHTENBERG
There are no sects in geometry. voltaire
If there is any good in philosophy it is this: it never inspects pedigrees. seneca
The fruits of philosophy [are the important thing], not the
philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to
know how watches are constructed. lichtenberg
If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our
neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals
into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even
in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.
NIETZSCHE
Wonder is what the philosopher endures most; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. plato
[ 343 ]
The Life of the Mind
Philosophy contemplates reason, whence comes knowledge of
the true; philology observes that of which human choice is
the author, whence comes consciousness of the certain.
VICO
A great philosophy is not one which is never defeated. But a petty philosophy is always one which will not fight. A great philosophy is not a philosophy without reproach; it is a philosophy without fear. peguy
Philosophy is not the concern of those who pass through Divinity and Greats, but of those who pass through birth and death. If the ordinary man may not discuss existence, why should he be asked to conduct it? Chesterton
There may be some branches of human study — mechanics perhaps — where the personal spirit of the investigator does not affect the result; but philosophy is not one of them.
CHAPMAN
Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel. anonymous
The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very
uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes
through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from com-
mon sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation,
and from convictions which have grown up in his mind with-
out the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As
soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find
that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which
only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though
unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to
the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities
which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny
Of CUStOm. RUSSELL
[ 344 ]
Reason and Thought
There was never yet philosopher that could endure the tooth-
ache patiently. Shakespeare
Who can hold a fire in his hand
"While thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
SHAKESPEARE
My body is that part of the world which my thoughts can
alter. Even imaginary illnesses can become real ones. In the
rest of the world my hypotheses cannot disturb the order of
things. LICHTENBERG
Perfect accuracy of thought is unattainable, theoretically un-
attainable , and undue striving for it is worse than time wasted:
it positively renders thought unclear. peirce
Every abstract thinker tears love and time asunder.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. whitehead
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be
beaten, but they may start a winning game. goethe
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
VALERY
The world overcomes us, not merely by appealing to our reason, or by exciting our passions, but by imposing on our imagination. newman
[ 345 ]
The Life of the Mind
The history of thought can be summarized in these words:
It is absurd by what it seeks, great by what it finds.
VAUERY
The proper, unique, and perpetual object of thought: that which does not exist, that which is not before me, that which was, that which will be, that which is possible, that which is impossible. valery
One gives birth to a thought, a second assists at its baptism, a
third produces children with it, a fourth visits it on its death
bed, and the fifth buries it. lichtenberg
The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are
possessed by them. coleridge
In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that in-
sistence on hardheaded clarity issues from sentimental feeling,
as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence
on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the
mode in which human intelligence functions. whitehead
Whenever I hear people talking about “liberal” ideas, I am
always astounded that men should so love to fool themselves
with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal: it must
be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may
fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place
for liberality is in the realm of the emotions. goethe
Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas. whitehead
Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.
HANNAH ARENDT
[ 346 ]
Reason and Thought
We can ne\er get rid of mouse ideas completely; they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble — no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat ideas which will em- brace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape. samuel butler (ii)
The mind's direction is more important than its progress.
JOUBERT
When he was expected to use his mind, he felt like a right- handed person who has to do something with his left.
LICHTENBERG
Any mental activity is easy if it need not take reality into
account. proust
Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.
PASCAL
In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared
minds. pasteur
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
SAMUEL BUTLER (ii)
The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but
a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.
SANTAYANA
The mind must have some worldly objects to excite its atten-
tion, otherwise it will stagnate in indolence, sink into
melancholy, or rise into visions and enthusiasm.
CHESTERFIELD
[ 347 ]
The Life of the Mind
Good sense is the concierge of the mind: its business is not
to let suspicious-looking ideas enter or leave. stern
For a thing to be problematic it is necessary that we be not
altogether convinced of its opposite being true.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
In the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance
is the more forcible of the two. bacon
Think of a white cloud as being holy, you cannot love it;
but think of a holy man within the cloud, love springs up in
your thoughts, for to think of holiness distinct from man is
impossible to the affections. Thought alone can make mon-
sters, but the affections cannot. blake
The unexamined life is not worth living. socrates
The primary questions for an adult are not why or how t but
when and where. rosenstock-huessy
The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the
beast and man. Thanks to number, the cry becomes song, noise
acquires rhythm, the spring is transformed into a dance, force
becomes dynamic, and outlines figures. maistre
Neither in the subjective nor in the objective world can we
find a criterion for the reality of the number* concept, be-
cause the first contains no such concept, and the second
contains nothing that is free from the concept. How then
can we arrive at a criterion? Not by evidence, for the dice of
evidence are loaded. Not by logic, for logic has no existence
[ 348 ]
Reason and Thought
independent of mathematics: it is only one phase of this
multiplied necessity that we call mathematics.
How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged . Mathematics is the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal.
We cannot change the rules of the game, we cannot ascer- tain whether the game is fair. We can only study the player at his game; not, however, with the detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our own minds at play.
DANTZIG
In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a; the rest we don't call y , as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language. lichtenberg
I have often noticed that when people come to understand a
mathematical proposition in some other way than that of
the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, “Oh, I see.
That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it
to themselves from within their own system. lichtenberg
With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon
blind belief in another. lichtenberg
Comparison is the expedient of those who cannot reach
the heart of the things compared. Santayana
Look everywhere with your eyes; but with your soul never look at many things, but at one . rozinov
A clash of doctrines is not a disaster — it is an opportunity.
WHITEHEAD
[ 349 ]
The Life of the Mind
We need a categorical imperative in the natural sciences just
as much 3$ we need one in ethics. goethe
In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the
world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
OSLER
There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age. . . . Such a one was Voltaire. There are other men who attain greatness be- cause they embody the potentiality of their own day . . . they express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such a one was Descartes.
T. H. HUXLEY
Consciousness, which is the principle of liberty, is not the principle of art. We listen badly to a symphony when we know we are listening. We think badly when we know we are thinking. Consciousness of thinking is not thought.
GOURMONT
There are not many examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in a new form. The most captious mind must generally be satisfied with one pleasure or the other.
GOURMONT
The mere observing of a thing is no use whatsoever. Observ- ing turns into beholding, beholding into thinking, thinking into establishing connections, so that one may say that every attentive glance we cast on the world is an act of theorizing. However, this ought to be done consciously, with self-criti- cism, with freedom, and, to use a daring word, with irony.
GOETHE
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interest- ing than looking. goethe
[ 350 ]
Reason and Thought
Consciousness reigns but doesn't govern. valery
There is a great difference between still believing something
and believing it again. lichtenberg
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the
normal. william james
Egoism puts the feelings in Indian file.
CHAZAL
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who
cannot believe anything else, are both insane. Chesterton
With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments —
even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical
pain. LICHTENBERG
Our most important thoughts are those which contradict
our emotions. valery
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not under-
stand the process of reasoning, because they want to com-
prehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first
principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed
to reason from first principles do not understand matters of
feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are
unable to comprehend at a glance. pascal
Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast,
or of one thing too exclusively. voltaire
[ 351 ]
The Life of the Mind
An emotion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear
and distinct idea of it. sfinoza
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
THOREAU
Once a rigid idea of duty has got inside a narrow mind, it
can never again get out. joubert
Any system which is without its paradoxes is by the same
token as suspicious as an exact correspondence of several
witnesses in a trial at the Old Bailey. palmer
In relation to their systems most systemizers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack nearby; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings.
KIERKEGAARD
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. CHESTERTON
A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner. Halifax
Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical in-
fluence: hence the advantages it brings are turned all too soon
into disadvantages. goethe
The best human intelligence is still decidedly barbarous; it fights in heavy armor and keeps a fool at court. Santayana
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
[ 352 ]
Reason and Thought
Intellectual blemishes, lilce facial ones, grow more prominent
with age. la Rochefoucauld
New ideas are for the most part like had sixpences, and we
spend our lives trying to pass them off on one another.
SAMUEL BUTLER (ll)
We should treat our minds as innocent and ingenuous chil- dren whose guardians we are — be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. thoreau
The public buys its opinions as it buys its milk, on the
principle that it is cheaper to do this than keep a cow. So
it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
SAMUEL BUTLER (ll)
Let us settle about the facts first and fight about the moral tendencies afterward. samuel butler (ii)
Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.
WORDSWORTH
The highest and deepest thoughts do not “voluntary move harmonious numbers, 7 ' but run rather to grotesque epigram and doggerel. patmore
It is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged
understanding ... to invent or frame one simple new idea.
LOCKE
Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things,
nor opposites at all without opposites. plato
[ 353 ]
The Life of the Mind
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. Santayana
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse. pascal
The liker anything is to wisdom, if it be not plainly the thing
itself, the more directly it becomes its opposite.
SHAFTESBURY
Ultimate insights have a tendency to undermine the orthodox
approaches by which they have been reached. Santayana
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
HAZLITT
Intellectuals cannot tolerate the chance event, the unintel- ligible; they have a nostalgia for the absolute, for a universally comprehensive scheme. aron
A man cannot ask another a question without at the same
time answering it himself. This is “physiological.” If it were
not so, my answer would always satisfy him. valery
One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth-
saying. LICHTENBERG
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may be found a little drafty. samuel butler (ii)
Seek simplicity and distrust it.
[ 354 ]
WHITEHEAD
Reason and Thought
Logic and consistency are luxuries for the gods and the lower
animals. Samuel butler (n)
Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
VALERY
Thou hast commanded that an ill-regulated mind should be its own punishment. saint augustine
Our minds are lazier than our bodies. la Rochefoucauld
Mind is rather a little bourgeois, yet you can’t dispense with
the tiers 6tat. rozinov
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions
and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
SANTAYANA
Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.
SANTAYANA
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterward be always old-fashioned. santayana
A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote in- quiries. DR. JOHNSON
[ 355 ]
Language and Ideas
If language had been the creation, not of poetry, but of
logic, we should only have one. hebbel
If there were only one language, then language would be in a much too triumphant position in regard to silence. Language would seem too much like territory conquered from silence, and silence too much subject to the will of language.
PICARD
Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunder- standing the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say having a double meaning.
ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY
The French language is a pianoforte without a pedal.
GIDE
I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.
LICHTENBERG
It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy. lichtenberg
Every individual or national degeneration is immediately re- vealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.
MAISTRE
My language is the universal whore whom I have to make
into a virgin. kraus
Language and Ideas
Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make
more clear. joubert
To say “this combination of words make no sense” excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary, it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent some- one from getting in or out; but it may also be a part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it may show where the property of one man ends and that of another begins. So, if I draw a boundary line, that is not yet to say what I am drawing it for.
WITTGENSTEIN
In regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to
labor. TOCQUEVILLE
The public doesn't understand German; and in journalese I can't tell them so. kraus
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.
PASCAL
Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two. proust
It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and
speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none
of them extraordinary. This is how one recognizes that there
is a soul at that moment, if at the same time one experiences
the sensation that everything else — everything that would
require a larger vocabulary — is mere possibility. valery
The Life of the Mind
Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence
against their own understanding. Halifax
There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defense,
to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard them round
about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words:
which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers,
or holes of foxes, than fortresses of fair warriors. locke
Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
KAUFMANN
What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is
not new ideas; it is the idea by which they are obsessed that
what has been said has still not been said enough.
DELACROIX
How can I tell what I think till I see what I say. forster
With a knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. thoreau
Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.
KRAUS
“Virtually” is apt to cover more intellectual sins than “charity” does moral delicts. t. h. huxley
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness. dr. Johnson
Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to con- ceal thought. OSLER
[ 358 ]
Language and Ideas
People do not think about the events of life as differently as
they speak about them. lichtenberg
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
WITTGENSTEIN
The one who loves and understands a thing best will incline
to use the personal pronouns in speaking of it. To him there
is no neuter gender. thoreau
Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of
language. . . . The intervention of grammarians is almost
always bad. gourmont
If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper
way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of
the English tongue. belloc
It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, be-
cause it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define
it at the same time. williams
I had rather feel compunction than understand the definition
of it. THOMAS A KEMPIS
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall
of words. SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Similarities are not as susceptible of definition as differences.
HALLE
[ 359 ]
The Life of the Mind
What a deal of talking there would be in the world if we
desired at all costs to change the names of things into defini-
tions. LICHTENBERG
Superfluity of lecturing causes ischial bursitis. osler
Memories and Dreams
Some people do not become thinkers simply because their
memories are too good. Nietzsche
Some men's memory is like a box, where a man should mingle
his jewels with his old shoes. Halifax
Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back
in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
CONNOLLY
What recalls another to us most vividly is precisely that which we had forgotten because it was unimportant: it has remained as it was, unaltered by our thought. proust
Some memories are like friends in common; they can effect
reconciliations. proust
[ 360]
Memories and Dreams
It's very difficult to describe from memory what has been
natural for you; the factitious, the shammed, is described
more easily because the effort that's been made to sham it
has engraved it on the memory. stendhal
We don’t remember pure (unalloyed) sensations.
STENDHAL
When we have understood, we hear in retrospect. proust
A very great memory often forgetteth how much time is
lost by repeating things of no use. Halifax
The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only
know that some things do not come to our mind when we
want them to. nietzsche
To want to forget something is to think of it.
french proverb
Then the band would play a march, amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil: then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como (the Lake of Como being for that purpose transferred to the neighborhood of Rome); there would come a scene in the bushes, and so on, and so on. dostoevski
Sensations are rapid dreams.
SANTAYANA
Here we are all by day; by night w’are hurled
By dreams, each one into a sev’rall world.
HERRICK
[ 361 ]
The Life of the Mind
The civil wilderness of sleep.
HERRICK
If people would recount their dreams truthfully, one might
divine character more correctly from dreams than from faces.
LICHTENBERG
In dreams I do not recollect that state of feeling so common when awake, of thinking on one subject and looking at another. coleridge
Authentic symbolism is present when something specific
represents something more universal, not as a dream or a
shadow, but as a living momentary revelation of what is
inscrutable. goethe
What is beneath the earth is quite as natural as what is above
ground, and he who cannot summon spirits in the daytime
under the open sky will not evoke them at midnight in a
vault. GOETHE
I am so unhappy at the present time that in my dreams I am
indescribably happy. Kierkegaard
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly
and safely insane every night of our lives. fisher
The inquiry into a dream is another dream. Halifax
[ 362 ]
C°)
LIFE’S MINOR PLEASURES AND TRIALS
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
Home is the only place where you can go out and in. There
are places you can go into, and places you can go out of,
but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go
out and in both, is home. Macdonald
Home is the place where, when you have to go there.
They have to take you in.
I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.
FROST
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it.
JANE AUSTEN
But Islands of the Blessed, bless you son,
I never came upon a blessed one.
FROST
Hearts may fail, and Strength outwear, and Purpose turn to Loathing,
But the everyday affair of business, meals, and clothing, Builds a bulkhead ’twixt Despair and the Edge of Nothing.
KIPLING
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
DR. JOHNSON
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
Take care to get what you fike or you will be forced to like
what you get. Where there is no ventilation, fresh air is
declared unwholesome. shaw
Life would be tolerable were it not for its amusements.
g. c. LEWIS
A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.
RICHTER
Amusement is the happiness of those that cannot think.
POPE
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
DR. JOHNSON
Simple pleasures ... are the last refuge of the complex.
WILDE
Where one's work is concerned, one should be an epicure.
DELACROIX
You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.
DR. JOHNSON
Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicu- ously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people. shaw
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to
go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to
enjoy the other five. maugham
[ 366 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
The gods are those who either have money or do not want it.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the con- crete devotes himself utterly to money. Schopenhauer
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf.
And how one ought never to think of oneself.
How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking, — My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.
CLOUGH
When I lack money, Fm bashful wherever I go. I must ab-
solutely get over this. The best way would be to carry a
hundred gold louis in my pocket every day for a year. The
constant weight of the gold would destroy the root of the evil.
STENDHAL
Rich people would not enjoy their little meannesses if they
knew how much their friends enjoy them. l. p. smith
After buying into the Consols ... I read Seneca “On the
Contempt of Wealth.” What intolerable nonsense!
SYDNEY SMITH
There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good
income is of no avail. l. p. smith
Poverty does not produce unhappiness: it produces degrada-
tion. SHAW
[ 367 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
There are several ways in which to apportion the family
income, all of them unsatisfactory. benchley
Small rooms discipline the mind; large ones distract it.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
He who wants to eat cannot sleep. brillat-savarin
Is sleep a mating with oneself? novalis
Sleep faster, we need the pillows.
YIDDISH PROVERB
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying
awake in bed in the morning. dr. Johnson
Cleanliness does not presage civilization. It results from it.
DUMAS
I test my bath before I sit.
And I'm always moved to wonderment That what chills the finger not a bit Is so frigid upon the fundament.
NASH
I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else. dr. Johnson
Grub first, then ethics.
BRECHT
Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
DR. JOHNSON
[ 368 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
Gastronomy rules all life: the newborn baby’s tears demand
the nurse’s breast, and the dying man receives, with some
pleasure, the last cooling drink. brillat-savarin
What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in
our childhood? lin yutang
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness
than the discovery of a new star. brillat-savarin
You first parents of the human race . . . who ruined your-
self for an apple, what might you not have done for a
truffled turkey? brillat-savarin
Soup and fish explain half the emotions of life.
SYDNEY SMITH
Few among those who go to restaurants realize that the man who first opened one must have been a man of genius and a profound observer. brillat-savarin
Plain cooking cannot be entrusted to plain cooks.
COUNTESS MORPHY
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grapenuts on principle.
CHESTERTON
This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to. dr. Johnson
To make good soup, the pot must only simmer or “smile.”
FRENCH PROVERB
[ 369 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
There is no such thing as a pretty good omelet.
FRENCH PROVERB
Fish, to taste right, must swim three times — in water, in butter, and in wine. polish proverb
The truffle is not an outright aphrodisiac, but it may in cer-
tain circumstances make women more affectionate and men
more amiable. brillat-savarin
The salad — for which, like everybody else I ever met, he had
a special receipt of his own. du maurier
Some [foods] should be eaten before fully ripe, such as capers,
asparagus, sucking-pigs, and pigeons . . . ; others, at the
moment of perfection, such as melons, most fruit, mutton,
and beef . . . ; others, when they start to decompose, such
as medlars, woodcocks, and especially pheasants; others, fi-
nally, after the methods of art have removed their deleterious
qualities, such as the potato and the cassava root.
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Frying gives cooks numerous ways of concealing what ap- peared the day before, and in a pinch facilitates sudden demands, for it takes little more time to fry a four-pound carp than to boil an egg. brillat-savarin
Salt is the policeman of taste: it keeps the various flavors of
a dish in order and restrains the stronger from tyrannizing
over the weaker. chazal
Let the salad-maker be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a statesman for salt, and a madman for mixing.
SPANISH PROVERB
[ 370 ]
Life’s Minor Pleasures and Trials
Of wine the middle, of oil the top, and of honey the bottom
is best ENGLISH PROVERB
Vodka is the aunt of wine. Russian proverb
Coffee from the top of the cup, chocolate from the bottom.
VENETIAN PROVERB
For unknown foods, the nose acts always as a sentinel and
cries, “Who goes there?” brillat-savarin
If we eat while holding our nose, we . . . taste in an obscure,
imperfect manner. By this means the most disgusting medi-
cines are swallowed almost without being tasted.
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
How much depends upon the way things are presented in
this world can be seen from the very fact that coffee drunk
out of wineglasses is really miserable stuff, as is meat cut at
the table with a pair of scissors. Worst of all, as I once
actually saw, is butter spread on a piece of bread with an
old though very clean razor. lichtenberg
Eating alone fosters egotism, encourages one to care only
for oneself, isolates one from one's surroundings, dissuades
one from paying little polite attentions. ... It is easy, in
society, to observe those guests who ordinarily eat in restau-
rants. BRILLAT-SAVARIN
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner
upon his table than when his wife talks Greek.
DR. JOHNSON
[ 371 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
Dinnertime is the most wonderful period of the day and
perhaps its goal — the blossoming of the day. Breakfast is
the bud. The dinner itself is, like life, a curve: it starts off
with the lightest courses, then rises to the heavier, and con-
cludes with light courses again. novalis
And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must
cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true
that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by
writing them down. Virginia woolf
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
DR. JOHNSON
Crowd not your table: let your number be Not more than seven, and never less than three.
KING
Let the number of guests not exceed twelve ... so chosen that their occupations are varied, their tastes similar . . . ; the dining room brilliantly lighted, the cloth pure white, the temperature between 6o° and 68°; the men witty and not pedantic, the women amiable and not too coquettish; the dishes exquisite but few, the wines vintage . . . ; the eating unhurried, dinner being the final business of the day . . . ; the coffee hot . . . ; the drawing room large enough to give those who must have it a game of cards while leaving plenty of room for after-dinner talk . . . ; the tea not too strong, the toast artistically buttered . . . ; the signal to leave not before eleven, and everyone in bed at midnight.
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Gastronomical perfection can be reached in these combina- tions: one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or a hillside; two persons, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good restaurant; six people, of no matter what sex or
[ 372 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
age, dining in a good home. The six should be capable of
decent social behavior: that is, no two of them should be so
much in love as to bore the others, nor, at the opposite ex-
treme, should they be carrying on any sexual or professional
feud which could put poison in the plates all must eat from.
A good combination would be one married couple, for warm
composure; one less firmly established, to add a note of in-
vestigation to the talk; and two strangers of either sex, upon
whom the better-acquainted could sharpen their questioning
wits. Hunger and fair-to-good health are basic requirements,
for no man stayed by a heavy midaftemoon snack or gnawed
by a gastric ulcer can add much to the general well-being.
M. F. K. FISHER
A host is like a general: it takes a mishap to reveal his genius.
HORACE
There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to
forget you are wearing it. mme. de girardin
Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither
— these make the finest company in the world. l. p. smith
The men and women who make the best boon companions
seem to have given up hope of doing something else. They
have, perhaps, tried to be poets and painters; they have tried
to be actors, scientists, and musicians. But some defect of
talent or opportunity has cut them off from their pet ambi-
tion and has thus left them with leisure to take an interest
in the lives of others. Your ambitious man is selfish. No matter
how secret his ambition may be, it makes him keep his
thoughts at home. But the heartbroken people — if I may
use the word in a mild benevolent sense — the people whose
wills are subdued to fate, give us consolation, recognition,
and welcome. chapman
[ 373 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
It is difficult to speak out a sentiment that your table com-
panions disapprove of. chapman
One of a hostess's duties is to serve as a procuress. proust
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to
drink with — even if he drank. mencken
The dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mis-
taken, but they both make the same mistake. They both
regard wine as a drug and not as a drink. Chesterton
There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative
like money. burroughs
Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does
not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer
to the product. He does not improve and simplify his mer-
chandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.
BURROUGHS
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless, a passion for gambling is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown. shaw
Gambling promises the poor what property performs for
the rich: that is why the bishops dare not denounce it funda-
mentally. SHAW
If the Prince of Monaco has a roulette table, surely convicts
may play cards. chekhov
[ 374 ]
Life’s Minor Pleasures and Trials
Everything seems flat and tasteless when you come from a
place where the seasoning is high — that's one of the causes
of the boredom experienced in the provinces by a man of
the world. stendhal
Silence is the only phenomenon today that is “useless'’: it
cannot be exploited. picard
The most sensible and intelligent nation in Europe lays
down, as the Eleventh Commandment, the rule Never inter-
rupt. Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of inter-
ruption. SCHOPENHAUER
Noise: a stench in the ear. The chief product and authen-
ticating sign of civilization. bierce
Noise is manufactured in the city, just as goods are manu-
factured. The city is the place where noise is kept in stock,
completely detached from the object from which it came.
PICARD
Radio sets are like continuously-firing automatic pistols shoot- ing at silence. picard
I hate war: it ruins conversation. fontenelle
Visits always give pleasure — if not the arrival, the departure.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
SCHOPENHAUER
[ 375 ]
Life’s Minor Pleasures and Trials
We read often with as much talent as we write. Emerson
When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter I say,
“I’ve had enough.” But when I stop reading poems or novels
I say, “No more of that, no more of that.” chekhov
Nine-tenths of the letters in which people speak unreservedly
of their inmost feelings are written after ten at night.
HARDY
There is a theater public that is never so much amused as
when it cries. silvestre
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of
yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he
will make a fool of himself too. Samuel butler (ii)
When I play with my cat, who knows but that she regards
me more as a plaything than I do her? montaigne
When ages grow to civility and elegancy men come to build
stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the
greater perfection. bacon
The most significant element in the Western garden art is the point-de-vue of the great rococo park, upon which all its avenues and clipped hedge walks open and from which vision may travel out to lose itself in the distances. A feeling for the faraway is at the same time one for history. At a distance, space becomes time and the horizon signifies the future. The baroque park is the park of the Late season, of the approach- ing end, of the falling leaf. A Renaissance park brings us a vision of a midsummer noon. It is timeless, and nothing in its form-language reminds us of mortality. spengler
[ 376 ]
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion,
another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once,
and have no respect one to another, great variety is com-
mendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of
optics and geometry. wren
I believe it is no wrong observation that persons of genius,
and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond
of nature. On the contrary, people of the common level of
understanding are principally delighted with the little niceties
and fantastical operations of art, and constantly think that
finest which is least natural. A citizen is no sooner proprietor
of a couple of yews, but he entertains thoughts of erecting
them into giants, like those of Guildhall. pope
It must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of
nature is an innocent amusement; and some praise will be
allowed, by the most supercilious observer, to him who does
best what such multitudes are contending to do well.
DR. JOHNSON
In natural objects we feel ourselves, or think of ourselves, only by likenesses — among men too often by differences. Hence the soothing love-kindling effect of rural nature and the bad passions of human societies. coleridge
I would give up part of my lifetime for the sake of knowing what is the average barometer reading in Paradise.
LICHTENBERG
There are people who go look at gardens and fountains while empires are being overthrown. Chateaubriand
Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any
other element in life. william james
[3771
Life's Minor Pleasures and Trials
No man, I suspect, ever lived long in the country without
being bitten by . . . meteorological ambitions. He likes to
be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed up,
to have more trees and larger blown down than his neighbors.
LOWELL
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
DR. JOHNSON
Travel makes a wise man better but a fool worse.
THOMAS FULLER
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. dr. johnson
Nothing makes a man or woman look so saintly as seasickness.
SAMUEL BUTLER (il)
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as foreign land.
CHESTERTON
To know a foreign country at all well you must not only have lived in it and in your own, but also lived in at least one other one. maugham
What is it sacrilege to destroy? The metaxu . No human being should be deprived of his metaxu , that is to say, of those relative and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is impossible.
SIMONE WEIL
My life's amusements have been just the same
Before and after standing armies came.
POPE
[ 378 ]
Life’s Minor Pleasures and Trials
It is an odd thing about patriotism, the true love of one's
country. A man can love his native land and never know that
he loves it, though he live to be eighty — but then he must
have stayed at home. heine
If you want to discover your true opinion of anybody, observe
the impression made on you by the first sight of a letter from
him. SCHOPENHAUER
Human nature is so well disposed toward those in interesting
situations, that a young person who either marries or dies,
is sure to be kindly spoken of. jane austen
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
NASH
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman. bulwer-lytton
Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his
native place. dr. Johnson
Honest bread is very well — it's the butter that makes the
temptation. jerrold
[ 379 ]
AGES OF MAN
Ages of Man
Except during the nine months before he draws his first
breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
SHAW
An infant of two or three months will smile at even half a painted dummy face, if that half of the face is fully repre- sented and has at least two clearly defined points or circles for eyes; more the infant does not need, but he will not smile for less. The infant's instinctive smile seems to have exactly that purpose which is its crowning effect, namely, that the adult feels recognized, and in return expresses recognition in the form of loving and providing. erikson
Gradually I came to know where I was, and I tried to express
my wants to those who could gratify them, yet could not, be-
cause my wants were inside me, and they were outside, nor
had they any power of getting into my soul. And so I made
movements and sounds, signs like my wants, the few I could,
the best I could; for they were not really like my meaning.
And when I was not obeyed, because people did not under-
stand me, or because they would not do me harm, I was
angry, because elders did not submit to me, because freemen
would not slave for me, and I avenged myself on them bv
tears . saint Augustine
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be
told of giants and castles. DR * Johnson
[ 383 ]
Ages of Man
The gestures of an adult are those of a carpenter, the gestures
of an infant those of a mason. chazal
The serious side of life is the toy of the adult. Only it is not
to be compared with the sensible things that fill a nursery.
KRAUS
The earlier in life the first fright occurs, the more dangerous
it is. RICHTER
If a child tells a lie, tell him that he has told a lie, but don't
call him a liar. If you define him as a liar, you break down his
confidence in his own character. richter
The child sees everything which has to be experienced and
learned as a doorway. So does the adult. But what to the
child is an entrance is to the adult only a passage.
NIETZSCHE
No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child. hugo
In every man there lies hidden a child between five and eight
years old, the age at which na*ivet6 comes to an end. It is
this child whom one must detect in that intimidating man
with his long beard, bristling eyebrows, heavy mustache, and
weighty look — a captain. Even he conceals, and not at all
deep down, the youngster, the booby, the little rascal, out
of whom age has made this powerful monster. valery
In the child, happiness dances; in the man, at most it smiles
or weeps. When a man dances, he can only express the beauty
of the art, not himself or his feelings. richter
[ 384 ]
Ages of Man
Children find it difficult to distinguish between human arti-
facts and natural objects. goethe
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger,
even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood
neither can nor should be forgiven. shaw
The child does not know that men are not only bad from
good motives, but also often good from bad motives. There-
fore the child has a hearty, healthy, unspoiled, and insatiable
appetite for mere morality, for the mere difference between
a good little girl and a bad little girl. Chesterton
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore.
And that's what parents were created for.
NASH
It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative.
PAVESE
It is to be noted that children's plays are not sports, and
should be regarded as their most serious actions.
MONTAIGNE
Unlike grownups, children have little need to deceive them-
selves. GOETHE
The language of the child is silence transformed into sound:
the language of the adult is sound that seeks for silence.
PICARD
[ 385 ]
Ages of Man
Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also
the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and ma-
turity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every
period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon it in the
next. The shortest is old age because we shall never to be
able to think back on it. pavese
Credulity is the man's weakness but the child's strength.
LAMB
Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
CHAZAL
From infancy through childhood's giddy maze,
Froward at school and fretful in his plays.
The puny tyrant burns to subjugate The free republic of the whip-gig state.
If one, his equal in athletic frame,
Or, more provoking still, of nobler name.
Dare step across his arbitrary views,
An Iliad, only not in verse, ensues:
The little Greeks look trembling at the scales,
Till the best tongue, or heaviest hand prevails.
COWPER
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature.
A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judg- ment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
SCHOPENHAUER
A girl of fifteen generally has a greater number of secrets
than an old man, and a woman of thirty more arcana than
a chief of state. ortega y gasset
[ 386 ]
Ages of Man
The bookish flavor of the language of adolescence is natural
to this age which knows theory and is ignorant of practice.
HERZEN
Hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. Chesterton
What is more enchanting than the voices of young people
when you can't hear what they say? l. p. smith
The young man is deliberately odd and prides himself on it; the old man is unintentionally so, and it mortifies him.
RICHTER
The spirit of a young man ripens from strength to beauty as his body ripens from beauty to strength. richter
Don't let young people confide in you their aspirations; when
they drop them, they will drop you. l. p. smith
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing:
age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
SHAW
The younger we are, the more each individual object repre- sents for us the whole class to which it belongs.
SCHOPENHAUER
Sensuality is the vice of young men and of old nations.
LECKY
[ 387 ]
Ages of Man
Young people are always more given to admiring what is
gigantic than what is reasonable. Delacroix
The young man plays at busying himself with problems of
the collective type, and at times with such passion and such
heroism that anyone ignorant of the secrets of human life
would be led to believe that his preoccupation was genuine.
But, in truth, all this is a pretext for concerning himself with
himself, and so that he may be occupied with self.
ORTEGA Y GASSET
In his youth, everybody believes that the world began to exist only when he was born, and that everything really exists only for his sake. goethe
All that is good in man lies in youthful feeling and mature
thought. joubert
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for ex-
ecution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for
settled business. bacon
During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is:
not to take the risk. When once the risk has really been taken,
then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking
at first one turns aside and serves trivialities; in the second
case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic,
and perhaps to presumption. Kierkegaard
Youth ends when we perceive that no one wants our gay
abandon. And the end may come in two ways: the realization
that other people dislike it, or that we ourselves cannot con-
tinue with it. Weak men grow older in the first way, strong
men in the second. pavese
[ 388 ]
Ages of Man
Every man over thirty identifies his youth with the worst
fault he thinks he has discovered in himself. pavese
From thirty to forty-five runs the stage in which a man
normally finds all his ideas, the first principles, at least, of that
ideology which he is to make his own. After forty-five he
devotes himself to the full development of the inspirations
he has had between thirty and forty-five. ortega y gasset
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved
mankind. chamfort
The first forty years of life give us the text: the next thirty
supply the commentary. Schopenhauer
I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to
esteem fewer people and to bear with more. shenstone
When young we are faithful to individuals; when older we
grow more loyal to situations and to types. When we meet
such specimens, we seem to know all about them in an
instant (which is true), and thus in spite of our decreasing
charms we sweep them off their feet, for young people do not
understand themselves and, fortunately for ns, can still be
hypnotized by those who do. connolly
There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young
men can possibly imagine. l* p. smith
After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more
obvious one's family traits become. proust
[ 389 ]
Ages of Man
No wise man ever wished to be younger. swift
Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable
enthusiasms, tastes, and interests which are a mystery both
to its predecessors and to posterity. chapman
When a man takes to his bed, nearly all his friends have a
secret desire to see him die; some to prove that his health is
inferior to their own, others in the disinterested hope of
being able to study a death agony. Baudelaire
There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who
remain permanently at that age. sainte-beuve
Perhaps no one can be really a good appreciating pagan
who has not once been a bad puritan. bourne
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by its
source. cocteau
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.
DISRAELI
The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn. haskins
Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends.
[ 390 ]
NASH
Ages of Man
A man of fifty is responsible for his face. stanton
Our life resembles the Sybylline Books: the less there is left
of it, the more precious it becomes. goethe
Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews
hours and swallows minutes. chazal
The character we exhibit in the latter half of our life need not
necessarily be, though it often is, our original character, de-
veloped further, dried up, exaggerated, or diminished: it can
be its exact opposite, like a suit worn inside out. proust
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
SANTAYANA
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. o. w. holmes, sr.
The Child's Toys & the Old Man's Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons.
BLAKE
There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is dis- covered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders and say, “His memory is going.” dr. Johnson
An old man concludeth from his knowing mankind that they know him too, and that maketh him very wary.
HALIFAX
[ 391 ]
Ages of Man
An old man forfeits one of the greatest of human rights: no
longer is he judged by his peers. goethe
Old men have in some degree their reprisals upon younger,
by making nicer observations upon them, by virtue of their
experience. Halifax
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard.
Nor keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
FROST
To deprive elderly people of their bogeys is as brutal as snatch-
ing from babies their big stuffed bears. l. p. smith
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a
sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings. pope
Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same
reason: their long beards and pretenses to foretell events.
SWIFT
Animals are bom and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed
and peaceful only in old age. Santayana
Old men love to give advice to console themselves for not
being able to set a bad example. la Rochefoucauld
[ 392 ]
Ages of Man
An evil name — a drawback at first — sheds luster on old age.
L. P. SMITH
After the age of eighty, all contemporaries are friends.
MME, DE DINO
Since Penelope Noakes of Duppas Hill is gone, there is no one who will ever call me Nellie again. an old lady
Nothing is more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face.
RICHTER
Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most
selfish. THACKERAY
Few envy the consideration enjoyed by the eldest inhabitant.
EMERSON
To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still
alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a
fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be
given equally to women as well as men who have been dis-
tinguished in virtue. plato
One of the two things that men who have lasted for a hun-
dred years always say: either that they have drunk whisky
and smoked all their lives, or that neither tobacco nor spirits
ever made the faintest appeal to them. lucas
Pve never known a person to live to no or more, and then
die, to be remarkable for anything else. billings
[ 393 ]
Ages of Man
Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile.
WILDE
Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead,
to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the
living are but their executors. thoreau
Death is that after which nothing is of interest. rozinov
We shall lose the advantage of a man's dying if we are to have
a statue of him forthwith. It is very offensive to my imagina-
tion to see the dying stiffen into statues at this rate. We should
wait till their bones begin to crumble — and then avoid too
near a likeness to the living. thoreau
It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are
generally afraid of. samuel butler (ii)
All men are bom truthful, and die liars. vauvenargues
Often I have wished myself dead, but well under my blanket,
so that neither death nor man could hear me. lichtenberg
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
FORSTER
What really belongs to a man except what he has already
lived? What has a man to live for except what he is not yet
living? pavese
[ 394 ]
Ages of Man
Who must die must die in the dark, even though he sells
candles. Colombian proverb
Make sure to send a lazy man for the Angel of Death.
YIDDISH PROVERB
All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive.
CHESTERFIELD
Nowhere probably is there more true feeling, and nowhere worse taste, than in a churchyard. jowett
[ 395 ]
Index of Authors
About, Edmond, 192
Acton, Lord (John Dalberg-
Acton), 74, 82, 238, 239, 304,
331
Adams, Henry, 60, 61, 304 Adams, John, 316 Adams, John Quincy, 303 Addison, Joseph, 169 Ade, George, 191 M (George William Russell), 209
Alcott, Bronson, 110, 221 Amiel, Henri Freddric, 70 Andrewes, Lancelot, 90 Anonymous, 14 (Irish), 17 (Anglo-Saxon), 33, 35, 50, 51, 54, 68, 77, 87,99,126 (Irish), 130, 135, 145, 155, 162, 170, 200, 217, 270, 293, 299 (Rus- sian), 304, 308, 310, 344, 393 (An Old Lady)
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 48 Archilocus, 156
Arendt, Hannah, 16-17, 17, 106, 137, 143, 182, 230, 248, 252, 255, 285, 299, 316, 325, 346 Aristotle, 49, 149, 209, 299, 303, 310, 316
Arnold, Thomas, 230 Arnold, W. E., Jr., 232 Aron, Raymond, 354 Augustine, Saint, 5, 9, 10, 41, 82, 88, 97 , 114, 200, 303, 326, 355, 383 Ausonius, 169 Austen, Jane, 17, 365, 379 Author of Nero, 187
Bacon, Sir Francis, 8, 46, 53, 55, 56, 59, 67, 92, 105, 111, 136, 148, 151, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 183, 184, 194, 199, 208, 209, 213, 230, 246, 297, 300, 306, 317, 331, 348, 376, 388 Bagehot, Walter, 9, 43, 49, 82, 110, 125, 154, 163, 167, 232,
252, 255, 288, 302, 310, 315
Balfour, Earl of (Arthur James
Balfour), 254
Balzac Honore de, 169, 170, 184, 187, 193, 249, 281 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules, 170, 174
Barrett, Lawrence, 290 Barth, Karl, 75
Baudelaire, Charles, 47, 53, 93, 144, 159, 161, 188, 218, 223, 240, 274, 282, 390 Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de, 254 Bcbel, August, 246 Beerbohm, Sir Max, 47, 111, 132, 170
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 289 Belloc, Hilaire, 302, 359 Benchley, Robert, 63, 368 Bcranger, Pierre Jean de, 64 Berenson, Bernard, 284 Berkeley, George, 73 Berlioz, Hector, 270 Bernard, Claude, 111, 222, 259, 267
Bibesco, Elizabeth, 134 Bierce, Ambrose, 375 Billings, Josh, 84, 150, 162, 393 BirrelT, Augustine, 220 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 160, 255
Blake, William, 7, 20, 27, 28, 29, 33, 44, 53, 62, 69, 78, 81, 90, 92, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 111, 114, 126, 149, 153, 156, 193, 210, 212, 254, 267, 270, 291, 292, 303, 321, 340, 348, 391 Bloy, L6on, 90
Bolingbroke, Viscount (Henry St. John), 235
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 145, 245, 246, 327
Booth, Edwin, 290
Bourne, Randolph, 123, 145, 390
[ 397 ]
Index of Authors
Bradley, Francis Herbert, 35, 65,
97, 114, 193, 195, 200, 335
Braun, Wernher von, 222
Brecht, Bertolt, 368
Bright, John, 248
Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme, 302,
368, 369, 370, 371, 372
Broad, C. D., 34
Browne, Sir Thomas, 104, 156
Bryce, James, 216
Buber, Martin, 39, 50, 91, 106,
250
Bulwer-Lytton, see Lytton Burbank, Luther, 103 Burckhardt, Jakob, 227, 228, 231, 232, 234, 250, 301, 303, 307, 334
Burke, Edmund, 27, 58, 159, 298, 318
Burke, Thomas, 310
Burroughs, William, 374
Burton, Robert, 109
Butler, Joseph, 146
Butler, Samuel (I), 151, 157,
250, 276
Butler, Samuel (II), 9, 10, 31, 32,33, 42, 48, 57,61,65, 102, 104, 106, 120, 124, 133, 144, 153, 154, 156, 160, 191, 201, 207, 250, 259, 267, 286, 287, 291, 299, 322, 328, 333, 335, 336, 338, 339, 347, 352, 353, 354, 355, 359, 367, 376, 378, 394
Butterfield, Henry, 144, 245, 304
Byron, Lord (George Gordon),
68
Carlyle, Thomas, 18, 34
Carson, Anthony, 276
Casanova, Giovanni Jacopo, 62
Cavour, Conte Camillo Benso
di, 314
Cervantes, Miguel de, 196, 246, 290
C6zanne, Paul, 290
Chamfort, S6bastien Roch Nic-
olas, 8, 18, 26, 65, 119, 120,
121, 127, 140, 148, 156, 163,
185, 189, 190, 201, 203, 207,
216, 218, 220, 231, 279, 287,
301, 306, 312, 317, 389
Chapman, John Jay, 26, 34, 58,
65, 80, 82, 110, 111, 120,
140, 221, 227, 304, 321, 326,
329, 335, 344, 373, 374, 390
Chardonne, Jacques, 198
Chateaubriand, Vicomte Fran-
cois Rene de, 377
Chazal, Malcolm de, 5, 9, 12,
13, 14,15, 24, 39, 82, 86, 100,
101, 103, 104, 138, 167, 171,
173, 190, 249, 267, 351, 370,
384, 386, 391
Chekhov, Anton, 3, 19, 20, 60, 80, 113, 124, 142, 146, 147, 155, 180, 190, 193, 197, 199, 216, 220, 238, 250, 260, 275,
284, 303, 333, 374, 376 Chesterfield, Earl of (Philip
Dormer Stanhope), 26, 30, 40, 46, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 130, 139, 147, 149, 153, 155, 158, 171, 202, 217, 221, 253, 305, 306, 316, 318, 347, 395
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 3, 14, 40, 50, 56, 57, 60, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 74, 78, 120, 129, 133, 139, 148, 149, 163, 167, 169, 173, 186, 195, 207, 217, 221, 231, 235, 236, 243, 249, 252, 270, 285, 299, 307, 311, 323, 325, 326, 331, 333, 335, 340, 344, 351, 352, 369, 374, 378,
385, 387
Cioran, E. Michel, 153, 188, 230, 281, 299, 300, 336 Clark, Sir Kenneth, 4, 273, 291 Clemenceau, Georges, 246, 252 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 158, 161,
Cobbett, William, 163 Cocteau, Jean, 51, 247, 274, 283,
285, 289, 390
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 306 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 19, 24, 34, 36, 45, 58, 69, 81, 104, 115, 126, 140, 174, 175, 194, 201, 254, 281, 282, 332, 334, 337, 346, 362, 377 Collins, John Churton, 32, 41, 59, 123, 187, 218 Colton, Charles Caleb, 48, 187 Conan Dovle, see Doyle Connolly, Cyril, 6, 9, 19, 61, 139, 187, 188, 189, 194, 324, 335, 360, 389
Conrad, Joseph, 40, 203, 272, 310
Constable, John, 268, 273, 290, 291
Cooper, James Fenimore, 317 Cowley, Abraham, 155
[ 398 ]
Index of Authors
Cowper, William, 35, 3 86
Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 129
Cullen, William, 213
Damon of Athens, 289 Dana, Richard Henry, 301 Dante, Alighieri, 83 Dantzig, Tobias, 262, 348-49 Darling, C. J., 211 Daudet, Alphonse, 129 De Casseres, Benjamin, 170 Defoe, Daniel, 208 Degas, Edgar, 271, 291 Delacroix, Eug&ne, 10, 99, 251, 271, 273, 291, 293, 3 58, 366, 388
Democritus of Abdera, 181 Depret, Louis, 219 De Roberto, Frederico, 25 Deshouli£res, Antoinette, 332 Dickens, Charles, 143, 211, 215 Diderot, Denis, 105 Dino, Mme. de, 393 Disraeli, Benjamin, 10, 60, 150, 185, 248, 253, 254, 255, 280, 301, 390
Dix, George, 227 Donne, John, 88, 99, 322 Dostoevski, Fedor, 4, 5, 252, 361 Douglas, Norman, 122, 198, 223 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 208,
Dryden, John, 298 Du Bois, Henri, 189 Dumas, Alexandre, 171, 194,
368
Du Maurier, George, 370
Eliot, George, 66, 113, 135, 137, 162, 174, 187 Eliot, T. S., 231, 282 Ellis, Havelock, 100, 221, 251 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 18, 22, 24, 36, 37, 43, 52, 61, 65, 86, 89, 100, 119, 122, 124, 128, 129, 133, 140, 147, 154, 171, 196, 199, 220, 227, 231, 237, 251, 254, 271, 272, 273, 275, 286, 306, 308, 311, 315, 323, 325, 327, 332, 341, 376, 393 Epicurus, 52 Epimeniaes of Crete, 98 Erikson, Eric, 383
Faber, William, 90 Farquhar, Geoige, 113
Feather, William, 132, 146, 169,
Fenelon, Francois, 87 Fielding, Henry, 180 Firbank, Ronald, 88 Fisher, Charles, 362 Fisher, M. F. K., 372-73 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 222 Flaubert, Gustave, 237 Fontenelle, Bernard de, 219, 239, 343, 375
Forster, Edward Morgan, 129, 238, 358, 394
France, Anatole, 112, 208, 239 Francis, Sir Philip, 286 Fraser, Sir James, 199 Freeman, Edward Augustus, 230 Freud, Sigmund, 56, 105, 168, 182, 216, 217, 340 Frost, Robert, 54, 76, 134, 150, 365, 392
Froude, James Anthony, 76 Fuller, Margaret, 57 Fuller, Dr. Thomas, 51, 123, 125, 128, 132, 192, 203, 248, 285
Fuller, Thomas, 19, 39, 44, 51, 147, 150, 200, 211, 219, 221, 222, 378
Galen, 212 Galsworthy, John, 13 Garnett,, Richard, 179 Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth Cleg- horn, 329
Gibbon, Edward, 79, 301 Gide, Andre, 57, 269, 275, 286, 356
Girardin, Mme. Delphine de, 373
Gissing, Geoige, 236, 341 Gladstone, William Ewart, 248, 298
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 6, 21, 29, 34, 38. 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 52-53, 5 4 , 5 i 57, 58, 74, 76, 98, 101, 102, 105, 106, 115, 122, 124, 125, 137, 149, 162, 169, 170, 173, 180, 182, 191, 192, 203, 249, 252, 267, 270, 271, 273, 278, 282, 284, 289, 290, 292, 301, 313, 325, 327, 339, 345, 346, 350, 352, 362, 385, 388, 391, 392 Goldberg, Isaac, 254 Goldsmith, Oliver, 43 Goncharov, I. A., 159
[ 399 ]
Index of Authors
Goncourt, the Brothers, 293
Gourmont, Remy de, 89, 100,
111, 112, 113, 168, 171, 237,
269, 276, 279, 309, 322, 350,
359
Grarian, 53, 55, 112, 122, 133, 140, 147, 171, 249, 323, 327 Grahame, Kenneth, 104 Grant, General Ulysses S., 299 Groddeck, Georg, 36 Gypsy curse, 210
Hales, Sir James, 137 Halifax, Marquis of (George Savile), 8, 16, 22, 30, 32, 33, 35, 44, 45, 50, 53, 55, 60, 69, 79,80,81, 123,130,131,134, 138, 139, 148, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 190, 194, 198, 200, 203, 208, 222, 229, 245, 250, 251, 256, 288, 301, 305, 310, 311, 315, 316, 317, 318, 334, 341, 342, 352, 358, 360, 361, 362, 391, 392 Halle, Louis J., 359 Hardy, Thomas, 240, 376 Harrington, James, 315, 316 Harvey, Gabriel, 130 Haskins, Henry S., 22, 33, 35, 50, 142, 168, 213, 332, 390 Hazlitt, William, 4, 5, 31, 33, 38,42,46, 47,49, 54,81,113, 121, 125, 126, 134, 147, 219, 222, 274, 280, 286, 290, 311, 322, 354
Hebbel, Friedrich, 11, 22, 28, 31, 64, 141, 159, 228, 229, 269, 281, 283, 325, 356 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
Heine" Heinrich, 192, 234, 235, 250, 379
Heisenberg, Werner, 260 Heller, Erich, 240, 260, 324, 338 Heraclitus, 13, 73, 98, 211, 212 Herbert, George, 87, 89, 219 Herodotus, 244 Herrick, Dr., and Tyson, 213 Herrick, Robert, 361, 362 Herzen, Aleksander I., 74, 109, 109-110, 232, 233, 311, 387 Hippocrates, 213 Hitopadesa, The, 218 Hobbes, Thomas, 149, 150, 160, 246, 312
Hodgson, Ralph, 15, 87, 227 Hoffer, Eric, 11, 22, 26, 28, 59,
[4
112, 154, 158, 159, 163, 191,
211, 233, 236, 248, 300, 326,
334
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 1 5, 21, 144, 200, 201, 228, 274 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 55, 110, 139, 142, 208, 231, 234, 245, 327, 328, 339, 342 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr., 391 Hooton, Earnest, 8 Hope, Anthony (Anthony Hope Hawkins), 119
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 101 Horace, 373 Howell, James, 130 Hubbard, Elbert G., 18, 56, 59, 61,67, 83, 109, 110,113, 146, 193, 245
Hubbard, Frank McKinney (Kin), 18, 48, 151, 280, 305 Hugo, Victor, 45, 384 Hume, David, 73 Huntington, Collis P., 222 Humand, James, 282, 305 Huxley, Aldous, 54, 208, 274, 332
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 11, 16, 139, 219, 222, 260, 322, 330, 331, 340, 350, 358
Ibsen, Henrik, 251 Ignatius, Saint, 89 Inge, Dean William Ralph, 84, 312
Ingersoll, Robert, 99 Ion of Chios, 269 Irving, Washington, 119
Jacobs, Jane, 136-37 James, Henry, 16, 122, 239, 311 James, William, 4, 12, 128, 200, 324, 325, 343, 351, 377
! anin, Jules, 168 efferson, Thomas, 31, 82, 304, 325
Jenkins, Elizabeth, 172 Jerrold, Douglas, 379 Johnson, Gerald W., 247 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 17, 19, 20, 23, 34, 35, 38, 39, 43, 46, 48, 50, 59, 67, 90, 113, 115, 123, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 135, 138, 141, 146, 154, 172, 174, 182, 192, 193, 195, 196, 202, 203, 213, 217, 219, 220, 229, 239, 243, 248, 251, 275, 278, 279, 280, 287, 288, 299, 304,
i]
Index of Authors
314, 316, 317, 318, 327, 328,
337, 341, 355, 358, 365, 366,
368, 369, 371, 372, 377, 378,
379, 383, 391
Jonson, Ben, 85, 160, 172, 221, 280, 318
Joubert, Joseph, 8, 20, 30, 52, 54, 76, 109, 112, 145, 153, 160, 269, 274, 275, 280, 285, 347, 352, 357, 388 Jowett, Benjamin, 395 Juan Manuel, Don, 41 Junius, 304 Juvenal, 146, 302
Kafka, Franz, 74, 75, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 92
Kant, Immanuel, 3, 129, 139, 300, 304, 339 Kassner, Rudolf, 13 Kaufmann, Walter, 342, 358 Keats, John, 172, 269 Kepler, Johannes, 98 Kerr, Alphonse, 187 Kierkegaard, Soren, 8, 11, 62, 63, 67, 77, 80, 83, 84, 85, 87, 91, 115, 115-16, 138, 141, 183, 191, 193, 223, 228, 239, 240, 249, 252, 253, 274, 305, 342, 352, 362, 388 Kmg, William, 372 Kipling, Rudyard, 58, 365 Knox, Father Ronald A., 62, 222, 312
Kraus, Karl, 35, 63, 64, 105, 109, 135, 169, 171, 180, 215, 223, 236, 243, 246, 247, 263, 275, 278, 281, 323, 356, 357, 358, 384
La Brny&re, Jean de, 20, 45, 51, 52, 59,61, 121, 123, 136,138,
149, 154, 157, 159, 173, 175,
184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 202, 276
Lacordaire, Jean, 90 La Fontaine, Jean de, 31 Lamb, Charles, 132, 207, 386 Landor, Walter Savage, 82, 300 Langer, Susanne, 281 La Rochefoucauld, Francois, Due de, 8, 15, 20, 22, 23, 28, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 51, 52,61, 70,119,124,132, 149,
150, 152, 153, 182, 183, 184,
185, 189, 202, 213, 252, 291, 322, 353, 355, 392
Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 131,
140,152
Lawrence, David Herbert, 30 Le Bon, Gustave, 261 Lee, Stanislaus J., 32, 33, 45, 76, 86, 101, 103, 155, 229, 230, 272, 302, 306, 331, 334 Lecky, William Edward Hart- pole, 387
Lee, Nathaniel, 279 Leonardo da Vinci, 56, 98, 99, 292, 326, 368 Leverson, Ada, 171, 172 Lewes, George Henry, 196 Lewis, C. S-, 85 Lewis, George Comewall, 366 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 23, 25, 30, 39, 42, 79, 105, 106, 112, 119, 133, 135, 140, 146, 147, 152, 157, 174, 181, 208, 228, 260, 261, 277, 278, 286, 288, 292, 329, 332, 343, 345, 346, 347, 349, 351, 354, 356, 359, 360, 362, 371, 377, 394
Lin Yutang, 369 Locke, John, 333, 353, 358 Lorenz, Konrad Z., 6 Louis XIV, 273 Lowell, James Russell, 378 Lucan, 32
Lucas, Edward Venall, 393 Lyly, John, 194 Lynd, Robert, 337 Lytton, Edward Bulwer-, 62, 112, 124, 152, 169, 379
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 79,111,314
Macdonald, George, 27, 90, 365 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 145, 153 Madison, James, 309 Maine, Sir Henry, 244 Mairet, Paul, 143 Maistre, Joseph Marie de, 99, 109,348, 356
Maitland. Frederic W., 227 Mallarme, St^phane, 25, 283 Marbeau, Emmanuel, 152 Marcus Aurelius, 44 Marquis, Don, 172 Martineau, Harriet, 52 Marvell, Andrew, 5, 7 Marx, Karl, 18, 139 Mascall, Eric L., 195 Maugham, Somerset, 60, 277, 366, 378
[ 401 ]
Index of Authors
Maurice, Frederick Denison, 244
McLaughlin, Mignon, 203
Melancthon, 75
Melbourne, Viscount (William
Lamb), 68, 69
Menander, 198
Mencken, Henry Louis, 32, 140, 172, 374
Meredith, George, 11, 49 Mettemich, Prince Klcmens von, 163, 309
Michelet, Jules, 114 Mill, John Stuart, 168, 340 Moltere (Jean Baptiste Poque- lin), 49, 190, 201 Mondeville, Henri de, 213 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 12
Montague, Charles Edward,
246
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 31, 33, 51, 59, 63, 66, 75, 87, 98, 112, 155, 239, 302, 316, 376, 385
Montesquieu, Baron de La Brede et de (Charles de Secondat), 19, 20,81, 143,156, 240, 249, 302
Monti, Vincenzo, 68 Moore, George, 135, 181, 279 Moore, Marianne, 3, 36, 191 Morley, John, 68, 82 Morphy, Countess, 369 Morton, J. D., 36 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus,
290
Muir, Edwin, 11, 42 Mumford, Lewis, 135 Musset, Alfred de, 37
Napoleon, see Bonaparte Nash, Ogden, 35, 168, 189, 198, 216, 368, 379, 385, 390 Necker, Mme. Suzanne, 54 Needham, Joseph, 261 Neilson, William Allen, 279 Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 75, 82, 136, 213, 252, 260, 275, 340, 342, 345 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm,
5, 9, 10, 16, 19, 20, 21, 25,
28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46, 49, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 79, 81, 93, 104, 110, 112, 114, 115, 131, 132, 133, 145, 148, 152, 156, 162, 168, 172, 175, 191,
196, 199, 201, 211, 235, 236,
238, 245, 248, 249, 252, 267,
270, 276, 277, 279, 280, 285, 287, 309, 310, 311, 321, 323,
324, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 334, 338, 343, 360, 361, 384
Novalis (Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg), 8, 24, 102, 103, 190, 195, 196, 215, 234, 263, 289, 323, 368, 372
Ortega y Gasset, Jos6, 3, 14, 64, 144, 169, 174, 181, 186, 208, 210, 229, 230, 231, 234, 237, 240, 270, 318, 332, 333, 336, 348, 386, 388, 389 Osier, Sir William, 4, 15, 105, 212, 214, 215, 216, 21^, 350, 358, 360
Palmer, Samuel, 352 Pascal, Blaise, 12, 18, 23, 25, 26, 31, 38, 40, 58, 63, 75, 77, 81, 88, 89, 103, 130, 133, 135, 158, 161, 199, 201, 244, 253, 277, 279, 291, 298, 299, 324,
325, 330, 342, 347, 351, 354, 357
Pasteur, Louis, 347 Pater, Walter, 293 Patmore, Coventry, 27, 69, 81, 88, 93, 342, 353
Pavese, Cesare, 9, 11, 20, 26, 27, 35, 40, 44, 53, 54, 55, 58, 73, 83, 121, 156, 170, 173, 181,
271, 272, 278, 285, 288, 539, 385, 386, 388, 389, 394
Peacock, Thomas Love, 141, 272, 341
Pcguy, Charles Pierre, 160, 162, 163, 197, 214, 301, 305, 321, 344
Peirce, Charles S., 322, 345 Penn, William, 314 Picard, Max, 12, 15, 85, 104, 237, 356, 375, 385 Pieper, Josef, 47, 48, 132, 141 Plato, 179-80, 214, 337, 343, 353, 393
Plekhanoff, Georgi V., 261 Poitiers, Diane de, 152, 170, 201 Pope, Alexander, 30, 39, 42, 43, 44, 113, 121, 127, 188, 202, 284, 287, 301, 366, 377, 378, 392
Proust, Marcel, 6, 13, 21, 27, 28,
[ 402 ]
Index of Authors
29, 30, 61, 66, 121, 139, 149,
182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187,
188, 189, 216, 326, 330, 347,
357, 360, 361, 374, 389, 391
Proverbs
American, 218 Bosnian, 69, 124 Bulgarian, 175, 255 Colombian, 395 Continental, 32 Dutch, 197
English, 51, 173, 174, 251, 332, 371 Flemish, 67, 219 French, 127, 148, 159, 184, 361, 369, 370 Genoese, 101, 173, 251 German, 202, 203 Icelandic, 37 Irish, 32, 138, 162, 212 Italian, 138 Maltese, 69 Negro, 31, 240 New England, 150 Polish, 128, 132, 137, 142, 218, 370
Portuguese, 61, 375 Russian, 371 Savoyard, 48 Scottish, 84 Slovenian, 126 Spanish, 126, 172, 198, 273, 370
Swedish, 87, 100 Swiss, 6, 125, 155, 192, 221, 273
Venetian, 217, 371 Yiddish, 47, 49, 68, 69, 76, 79, 83, 88, 111, 123, 147, 151, 157, 162, 193, 197, 198, 199, 214, 221, 368, 395 Prudhon, Pierre-Paul, 307 Publilius Syrus, 141
Rabelais, Francois, 150
Ray, John, 102
Remusat, Charles de, 299
Richter, Jean Paul, 8, 18, 27, 40,
44, 48,49, 63, 70, 86,115,
131, 145, 163, 168, 172, 182,
197, 240, 366, 384, 387, 393
Rieff, Philip, 298
Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich von,
144
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 4
Rivarol, Antoine de, 103
Rochester, Earl of {John Wil-
mot), 190
Rogers, Samuel, 192
Roscommon, Earl of (Went-
worth Dillon), 284
Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen, 74,
75, 77-78, 99, 128, 134-35,
144, 181, 185, 233, 238, 243,
244, 260, 336, 345, 348, 356
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 40
Rozinov, V. V., 34, 65, 81, 143,
147, 148, 185, 235, 247, 277,
349, 355, 394
Ruskin, John, 65, 142, 288, 308,
Russell, Bertrand, 20, 97, 137, 141, 259, 262, 263, 313, 334, 344
Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin,
390
Saint-Exupery, Antoine de, 186 Saki (H. H. Munro), 148, 278 Santayana, George, 9, 16, 22, 26, 38, 48, 50, 52, 73, 76, 97, 99, 111, 122, 138, 139, 144, 145, 153, 191, 199, 218, 237, 239, 243, 247, 272, 273, 281, 286, 289, 293, 323, 328, 330, 332, 334, 336, 338, 339, 342, 347, 349, 352, 354, 355, 361, 391, 392
Schiller, Friedrich von, 4, 11, 18, 44, 188, 200, 210 Schlegel, Friedrich, 238 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 6, 10, 19, 23, 36, 48, 60, 64, 73, 104, 121, 130, 132, 134, 136, 159, 170, 201, 212, 236, 276, 281, 287, 293, 330, 367, 375, 379, 386, 387, 389 Selden, John, 120, 276 Seneca, 99, 133, 343 Shaftesbury, Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper), 148, 354 Shakespeare, William, 10, 24, 31, 34, 7i 126, 167, 179 1 80 185, 194, 223, 267, 283, 345 Shaw, George Bernard, 29, 38, 41, 57,64, 122,124, 125,126, 128, 139, 140, 152, 170, 192, 195, 196, 197, 209, 210, 212, 219, 223, 238, 246, 276, 289, 301, 308, 314, 317, 340, 341, 366, 367, 374, 383, 385, 387 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 282
Index of Authors
Shenstone, William, 44, 122,
146, 148, 155, 271, 285, 290,
389
Sickert, Walter, 131, 140, 141,
150, 156, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 276, 292, 307
Silesius, Angelus, 339 Silvestre, Paul Armand, 376 Simon, Jules, 307 Smith, A. B., 211 Smith, Logan Pearsall, 25, 35, 68, 125, 129, 161, 190, 202, 203, 223, 237, 250, 329, 367, 373, 387, 389, 392, 393 Smith, Sydney, 87, 129, 131,
151, 196, 308, 367, 369 Socrates, 348
Spencer, Herbert, 153, 305 Spengler, Oswald, 254, 261, 376 Spinoza, Baruch, 66, 86, 352 Stael, Mme. Germaine Necker de, 181, 233
Stanislaus, King of Poland, 66 Stanton, Edwin M., 391 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 15, 62, 131, 138, 179, 183, 184, 188, 239, 244, 245, 283, 361, 367, 375
Stephen, James, 277
Stem, Daniel, 348
Sterne, Laurence, 239
Stevens, Alfred, 291
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 59, 124,
131, 203, 238, 253, 336
Stravinsky, Igor, 272
Surtees, Robert Smith, 42
Swift, Jonathan, 40, 53, 80, 113,
119, 152, 228, 278, 288, 390,
392
Tacitus, 317
Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, 271 Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice de, 202, 281 Talmud, The, 196 Taylor, Jeremy, 190 Taylor, Sir Henry, 33, 67, 127, 130, 146, 196
Tchaikovsky, Petr Ilich, 290 Terence, 306
Thackeray^ William Makepeace,
Theresa, Saint, 91 Thiers, Louis Adolphe, 308 Thomas a Kempis, 26, 359 Thoreau, Henrv David, 21, 24, 30, 36, 50, 51, 55,66, 67, 104,
157, 200, 202, 211, 212, 216,
238, 252, 259, 262, 263, 277,
278, 282, 285, 286, 309, 324,
329, 335, 352, 353, 358, 359,
394
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 22, 29, 47, 53, 56, 76, 142, 161, 196, 209, 210, 211, 212, 218, 223,
228, 233, 247, 253, 255, 256, 297, 298, 300, 302, 306, 307, 308, 309, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 324, 357
Tolstoi, Leo, 80, 234, 297 Topsell, Edward, 114 Trollope, Anthony, 60, 192 Turgenev, Ivan, 277 Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 38,61, 125, 140, 251 Tyson, see Herrick, Dr.
Valery, Paul, 5, 7, 21, 22, 23, 56, 57, 64, 67, 70, 98, 110, 130, 147, 218, 227, 228, 249, 255, 271, 274, 276, 279, 283, 287, 288, 289, 328, 329, 340, 345, 346, 351, 354, 355, 357, 384 Van Gogh, Vincent, 86 Vapereau, Gustave, 36, 147 Vauvenargues, Marquis de (Luc dc Clapiers), 11, 22, 27, 53, 57, 126, 144, 183, 243, 336, 394
Vico, Giovanni Battista, 228,
229, 298, 344 Voltaire (Francois Marie
Arouet), 66, 99, 124, 160, 192, 267, 315, 323, 342, 343,
Walpole, Horace, 43
Walsh, Howel, 221
Walter, Bruno, 289
Webern, Anton von, 289
Webster, Daniel, 67
Weil, Simone, 17, 18,45, 50, 83,
86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 143,
150, 160, 183, 235, 287, 308,
378
Wellington, Duke of (Arthur Wellesley), 245 Wharton, Edith, 274 Whitehead, Alfred North, 30, 73, 77, 98, 99, 102, 104, 105, 128, 230, 237, 240, 244, 254, 261, 268, 278, 297, 322, 324, 326, 335, 343, 345, 346, 349, 354
[ 404 ]
Index of Authors
Wilde, Oscar, 5, 21, 31, 35, 37,
47, 54, 56, 87, 122, 123, 127,
129, 131, 146, 150, 151, 175,
194, 197, 210, 281, 298, 366,
394
Williams, Charles, 7, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 91, 127, 181, 183, 184, 229, 285, 331, 333, 341, 359
Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 79, 85, 183
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, 83,
268, 333, 334, 357, 359
Woolf, Virginia, 175, 198, 2S6,
372
Wordsworth, William, 353 Wren, Sir Christopher, 377
Xenophanes of Colophon, 79
Yeats, William Butler, 284 Young, Edward, 60
[ 405 ]
