Quote collection
471 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods."
"Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them."
"Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything."
"The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger."
"An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity."
"The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt."
"A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary."
"Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification."
"Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts."
"I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, un-travelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion."
"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions."
"For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing."
"Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better."
"Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, "Please strike here!"
"Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress."
"When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone."
"A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit."
"It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility"
"It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn."
"The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke."