Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
“A World Split Apart,” Commencement Address, Harvard (8 Jun 1978)
(Source)
I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old-age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by His Daughter, Lady Holland, Vol. 1, ch. 11 (1855)
(Source)
In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Address to UN General Assembly (13 Aug 1958)On the Middle East crisis.
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911) American evangelist, suffragist, author
Letter (1902)In Philadelphia Quaker (1950) ed. Logan Piersoll Smith
The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.
Helen Hayes (1900-1993) American actress
On Reflection, ch. 14 (1968)
There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Scientists” (1912)Full text.
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
“Thoughts on Various Subjects” (1706)
Full text.
If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
Intentions, “The Decay of Lying” (1891)
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #122 (20 Jul 1711)
To live with integrity in an unjust society, we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.
Starhawk (b. 1951) American writer, activist, feminist theologian [b. Miriam Simos]
Dreaming the Dark, ch. 3 “The Ethics of Magic” (1982)
The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
A Sand County Almanac, “November” (1949)
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, “Other People” (1931)
You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 Sep 1949)
We are dealing with veterans, not procedures — with their problems, not ours.
Omar Bradley (1893-1981) American general
Comment, while Administrator of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (1946)
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. The most sophisticated satellite has no conscience. The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist
Speech, The Family of Man Award, The Protestant Council of New York (Oct 1964)
(Source)
His last public speech. Reprinted in Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (1969).
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
Brain Droppings (1997)
I observe, besides, that men who abandon themselves to the debauches of wine or women find it more difficult to apply themselves to things that are profitable, and to abstain from what is hurtful. For many who live frugally before they fall in love become prodigal when that passion gets the mastery over them; insomuch that after having wasted their estates, they are reduced to gain their bread by methods they would have been ashamed of before. What hinders then, but that a man, who has been once temperate, should be so no longer, and that he who has led a good life at one time should not do so at another? I should think, therefore, that the being of all virtues, and chiefly of temperance, depends on the practice of them: for lust, that dwells in the same body with the soul, incites it continually to despise this virtue, and to find out the shortest way to gratify the senses only.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Xenophon, Memorabilia Book I, ch.2 [tr. E. Bysshe (1712)]Full text.
He’d been an angel once. He hadn’t meant to Fall. He’d just hung around with the wrong people.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens, 2. “Eleven Years Ago” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
(Source)
I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court’s decisions since Roth and Alberts, that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Potter Stewart (1915-1985) US Supreme Court Justice (1959-81)
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964) [Concurring]
(Source)Source of the paraphrase, "I can't define obscenity/pornography, but I know it when I see it."
I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to Gen. Joseph Hooker (26 Jan 1863)
The emptiest pitchers make the most noise.
[Los cántaros cuanto más vacios, más ruido hacen.]
Alfonso X (1221–1284) Spanish King of Castile and Leon
(Attributed)
But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
Jude the Obscure, Pt. I, ch. 4 (1895)
It iz an actewal fackt that most ov us work harder, tew seem happy, than we should have to, to be happy.
[It is an actual fact that most of us work harder, to seem happy, than we should have to, to be happy.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Josh Settles Up with His Correspondents Summarily” (1874)
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Address, Guildhall, London (12 Jun 1945)
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
“Open Letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers Congress” (16 May 1967)
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
(Attributed)
(Source)
In Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths, ch. 10 (1934).
When I hear a man applauded by the mob, I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956)
But every writer, especially every novelist, has a “message”, whether he admits it or not, and the minutest details of his work are influenced by it. All art is propaganda. Neither Dickens himself nor the majority of Victorian novelists would have thought of denying this. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.
When Carlini was convulsing Naples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, to obtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuming his life. The physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised him to go to the theater and see Carlini. He replied, “I am Carlini.”
It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “An Apology for the Devil” (1912)Full text.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Requiem,” Underwoods, Bk. 1 (1887)
Things are not what they seem; or, to be more accurate, they are not only what they seem, but very much else besides.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Man and Reality,” Vedanta for the Western World (ed. C. Isherwood) (1945)
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
The Great War, Vol. 1 (1933)
A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than that of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
A Sand County Almanac (1949)
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
(Attributed)On painting objectively. In Saturday Review (1 Sep 1956)
Avoid over-coordination. We have all observed months-long delays caused by an effort to bring all activities into complete agreement with a proposed policy or procedure. While the coordinating machinery is slowly grinding away, the original purpose is often lost. The essence of the proposals is being worn down as the persons most concerned impatiently await the decision. The process has been aptly called coordinating to death.
Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) US Navy Admiral
Address delivered to US Naval Post Graduate School (16 March 1954)
There’s no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don’t even have to exaggerate.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
(Attributed)In P.J. O'Brien, Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom, ch. 9 (1935)
If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Xenophon, Memorabilia Book IV, ch.8, sec.8(sometimes cited to Plato, Apology)
Alt. trans.:
- "If my life is to be prolonged now, I know that I must live out my old age, seeing worse, hearing less, learning with more difficulty, and forgetting more and more of what I have learned. If I see myself growing worse and reproach myself for it, tell me, how could I continue to live pleasantly? Perhaps even the god in his kindness is offering to end my life not only at the right time, but also in the easiest way possible."
- "If I were to live longer, perhaps I should fall into the inconveniences of old age: perhaps my sight should grow dim, my hearing fail me, my judgment become weak, and I should have more trouble to learn, more to retain what I had learnt; perhaps, too, after all, I should find myself incapable of doing the good I had done before. And if, to complete my misery, I should have no sense of my wretchedness, would not life be a burden to me? And, on the other hand, say I had a sense of it, would it not afflict me beyond measure?" [tr. E. Bysshe (1712)]
Administrivia: Things are back to normal
I’ve gotten the performance problems here cleared up by shifting my main blog (which was the spam traffic target) over to WordPress from Movable Type. I will probably eventually do the same to WIST, but that’s a ways off — I’ve done some serious tweaking to how I get MT to support WIST, and the migration of the data (the normal MT-WP export/import routine doesn’t include a good chunk of the data I store here), getting WP to behave the same (again, using categories for authors and such), and retaining all the permalinks to the current site (for the sake of Google and folks who have linked back) is going to be a non-trivial task.
In the meantime, though, things seem to be on an even keel here, and no more glitches in posting (knocks wood). Thanks for your continued reading and support.
No one is free who is a slave to the body.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Moral Letters to Lucilius [Epistulae morales ad Lucilium], letter 92, sec. 33, “On the Happy Life” (tr. R. Gummere (1918)]
It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think of a serious problem and decide that I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
St. John XXIII (1881-1963) Italian Catholic Pontiff (1958-63) [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli]
(Attributed)Quoted in "Thoughts on the Business of Life," Forbes (29 Dec 1997)
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
“Purely Personal Prejudices,” Strictly Personal (1953)
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
(Attributed)Quoted in Florence Emily Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, ch. 17 (1930)
Do not conceive that fine Clothes make fine Men, any more than fine feathers make fine Birds.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
Letter to Bushrod Washington (15 Jan 1783)
I despise all adjectives that try to describe people as liberal or conservative, rightist or leftist, as long as they stay in the useful part of the road. Even more, I despise those who go to the gutter on either the right or the left, and hurl rocks at those in the center.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech at Birthday Celebration, Washington (Oct 1963)
(Source)
There are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
As I Was Saying: A Chesterton Reader, ch. 17 [ed. R. Knille] (1985)
War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II [Father Severyan] (1984)
And Islington said nothing, but it smiled, in the manner of a cat who has not only devoured the cream and the canary, but also the chicken you were saving for dinner, and the crème brûlée that would have been dessert.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Neverwhere, ch. 17 (1996)
We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom, and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved briliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets. We know more about war than we know of peace, more about killing than we know of living.
Omar Bradley (1893-1981) American general
Armistice Day address, Boston (11 Nov 1948)
Society is made up of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Maxims and Thoughts, ch. 3 (1796) [tr. W. Merwin (1984)]
Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking. But if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Morality” (1912)Full text.
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“An Apology for Idlers” (1881)
(Source)
The person who says smugly that good manners are the same everywhere and people are just people hasn’t been farther out of Podunk than the next whistle stop.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Glory Road, ch. 8 (1963)
We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! And then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam,
To meet no more.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
John Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902) British historian, politician, writer
Letter (1881-04-24) to Mary Gladstone
CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
Round River (1953)
Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, “Age and Death” (1931)
TEVYE: [to God] You made many, many poor people. I realize of course it’s no shame to be poor, but it’s no great honor, either. Now. what would be so terrible if I had a small fortune?
Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) Russian-Jewish humorist [pseud. for Sholem Rabinowitz]
Fiddler on the Roof [with Joseph Stein] (1971)
Oh, to be seventy again.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
(Attributed (1931))
On seeing an attractive lady on his 95th birthday. Also given as "sixty" and "eighty, and attributed to others as well.Alternate: "What I wouldn't give to be seventy again."
Any church that violates the “whosoever will, let him come” doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“The Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (4 Feb 1968)
The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.
Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1965) American politician (US Senator, Maine)
“Declaration of Conscience,” Congressional Record, vol. 96, 81st Congress, 2d. sess. (1 Jun 1950)Full text.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers “Socrates,” 14Alt. trans.: "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.
Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
Killers of the Dream, Pt. 1, ch. 1 (1949, rev. 1961).
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
Man cannot … make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve them when they occur.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
The Rights of Man, ch. 1 (1791)
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
“Atheists, Like Fundamentalists, are Dogmatic,” >Pieces of Eight (1982)
If all hearts were open and all desires known — as they would be if people showed their souls — how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!
Administrivia: Technical difficulties
I’m having serious performance problems at my WIST site, largely due to spammers bringing the server to its knees trying to work their evil ways. Nothing’s getting through, but whilst they’re crowded around the building, posting of new material is highly problematic, and some that does get posted is lacking authors by the time the system processes. I correct these problems as soon as I spot them — but sometimes it can take many, many retries for the correction to actually get through.
So apologies for quotations being posted (esp. through the RSS feed / e-mail distribution) without authors associated. I am working on the problem, though there is no trivial solution as this point.
Charity begins at home but should not end there.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #1085 (1732)
(Source)
I do not preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, “Now, is that political, or social?” He said, “I feed you.” […] I can’t believe that you can compartmentalize life and say this is political and this is religious, because for us religion must permeate the whole of life. If people wish to say, “God’s writ does not run in the political sphere,” I want to ask, “Whose does?”
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
“The Bishop and South Africa,” interview by Rafael Suarez, Jr., Worldview (Dec 1984)
(Source)
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well-nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
A Modest Proposal (1729)
It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
Peace and Violence (1973)
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
Letter (1843-09-29) to Lord Murray
(Source)
What is the matter with the world that it is so out of joint? Simply that men do not rule themselves but let circumstances rule them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1828-06-25)
The church allows people to believe that they can be good Christians and yet draw dividends from armament factories, can be good Christians and yet imperil the well-being of their fellows by speculating in stocks and shares, can be good Christians and yet be imperialists, yet participate in war. All that is required of the good Christian is chastity and a modicum of charity in immediate personal relations.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Ends and Means, “Education” (1937)
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Thought and Word,” viii (1912)Full text.
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“My Shadow,” st. 1, A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)
Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.
Naomi Wolf (b. 1962), American writer, feminist, progressive
“Violence,” The Beauty Myth (1990).
There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.
Louis Aragon (1897–1982) French poet, novelist, publisher
“Preface to a Modern Mythology,” Paris Peasant (1926)
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Fall, ch. 56 [tr. J. O’Brien (1956)]
Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
A Sand County Almanac Foreword (1949)
I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, ch. 2 “Age and Death” (1931)
(Source)
Conduct [is] the ultimate test of the worth of a belief.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
(Attributed)
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) American novelist, journalist, playwright, activist
The Deer Park (1955)
Religion — easily — has the Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told! Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, He has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, till the end of time! But He loves you! He loves you and he needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise — somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story, holy shit!
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
“You Are All Diseased,” HBO Special (1999-02-06)
(Source)
Reprinted, slightly edited, in Napalm & Silly Putty (2001):Religion -- easily -- has the Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told! Think about it: religion has actually convinced people -- many of them adults -- that there's an invisible man who lives in the sky and watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And who has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to remain and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, till the end of time! But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money! He always needs money. He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, but somehow ... he just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, pays no taxes, and somehow always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy shit!
In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Plato, Phaedrus
In the long run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (1863)
Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
“What’s Wrong with Being Proud?” Pieces of Eight (1982)
If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Christine, Part 1, ch. 5 (1983)
There is no better indication of a man’s character than the company he keeps.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 3, ch. 34 (1517) [tr. Detmold (1882)]
One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
Cancer Ward, Part 2, ch. 10 [Shulubin] (1968)
Moralists tell you of the evils of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely say that I have been happier every guinea I have gained.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by His Daughter, Lady Holland, Vol. 1, ch. 9 (1855)
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But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare and abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truths in a few words. We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of actions are not not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may, therefore, be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Rambler, #175 (19 Nov 1751)
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Writing for a Hundred Years Hence” (1912)Full text.
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Treasure Island, ch. 1 (1883)
To be thoroughly good-natured, and yet avoid being imposed upon, shows great strength ov character.
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 157 “Affurisms: Hot Korn” (1874)
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Nothing endures but change.
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540-c.480 BC) Greek philosopher [Ἡράκλειτος, Herákleitos, Heracleitus]
In Diogenes Laertes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 9.8 [tr. R Hicks (1925)]
Alt trans.: There is nothing permanent except change. The only constant is change. Change is the only constant. Change alone is unchanging.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 52, epigraph (1897)
No doubt you are right, my best of friends, there would be far less suffering amongst mankind, if men — and God knows why they are so fashioned — did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.
[Gewiss, du hast recht, Bester, der Schmerzen wären minder unter den Menschen, wenn sie nicht – Gott weiss, warum sie so gemacht sind – mit so viel Emsigkeit der Einbildungskraft sich beschäftigten, die Erinnerungen des vergangenen Übels zurückzurufen, eher als eine gleichgültige Gegenwart zu ertragen.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther], “Letter from May 4th” (1774)
