Great Throughts Treasury

"Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography."

"It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant? You will not be able to set up in a pagan or an heretical or a wholly indifferent society the institutions characteristic of economic freedom; you will not be able to curb competition which alone would be sufficient to destroy such freedom, nor pursue permanently and consecutively anyone part of the program. The thing must be done as a whole, and it can be done as a whole only by the ambient influence of Catholicism."

"Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community."

"Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny."

"Like most modern words, Heresy is used both vaguely and diversely. It is used vaguely because the modern mind is as averse to precision in ideas as it is enamored of precision in measurement. It is used diversely because, according to the man who uses it, it may represent any one of fifty things."

"Life is a veil, its paths are dark and rough only because we do not know enough when Science has discovered something more we shall be happier than we were before."

"It seems to be saying perpetually; 'I am the end of the nineteenth century; I am glad they built me of iron; let me rust.' ... It is like a passing fool in a crowd of the University, a buffoon in the hall; for all the things in Paris has made, it alone has neither wits nor soul."

"It is, indeed, a truth which explains and co-ordinates all one reads of human action in the past, and all one sees of it in the present.[?] All tragedy is the conflict of a true right and a false right, or of a greater right and a lesser right, or, at the worst, of two false rights. Still more do men pretend in this time of ours, wherein the habitual use of the human intelligence has sunk to its lowest, that doctrine is but a private individual affair, creating a mere opinion. Upon the contrary, it is doctrine that drives the State; and every State is stronger in the degree in which the doctrine of its citizens is united. Nor have I met any man in my life, arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle."

"Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, and youth in Expectation. Youth is wise."

"Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether; but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage."

"Matilda told such dreadful lies, It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes Her aunt, who, from her earliest youth, Had kept a strict regard for truth, Attempted to believe Matilda The effort very nearly killed her."

"Man may? be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour."

"Man knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world?for nearly all men choose to live thus."

"Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense) will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense."

"Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey."

"May all good fellows that here agree drink Audit Ale in heaven with me, and may all my enemies go to hell! No‰l! No‰l! No‰l! No‰l! May all my enemies go to hell! No‰l! No‰l!"

"No, she laughed. How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say ?No? at the same time, it sounds like neighing ? yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up."

"Mr. Orage, one of the most active and intelligent reformers for the last generation in England, attempted this very thing. He, in his little intellectual review which was supported by so brilliant a group of writers for so many years, published week after week the ingredients of the English patent medicines and the cost of those ingredients. Not a single one of the newspapers followed suit, or dared publish so much as the fact that Orage was thus acting courageously in his own limited sphere for the public good."

"Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty."

"Next, a cause of the Modern Scientific Spirit's disease would seem to be the exclusion from consciousness of all that is not measurable by known and divisible units; because the scientific method can only deal with results recorded in known and divisible units. Thus, the physical scientist tends through habit to a state of mind in which qualities not so measurable seem negligible or itnaginary; hence the loss of the sense of beauty-----the loss of all that is qualitative; the loss of distinction and of hierarchy, in sensation. But the last cause of intellectual evil in the Modern Scientific Spirit is different from all of these, and may be thus expressed: Anyone can, with patience, do scientific work. It demands no individual, still less any rare, talent. The reward of scientific work in Physics or Record, the fame which it achieves, has nothing to do with the intellectual or creative ability of the man whose name is attached to it. The result of this is that intellectual ability, critical or creative, will be at a discount among scientists, for fame is in every form of activity a criterion of success. To excel in playing the violin, or in majestic architecture, or in lovely painting, or in verse, you must possess exceptional qualities. Of a thousand men only a few could be taught to paint even fairly beautiful things; perhaps not one in such a number could reach the fame attaching to genius. Of a thousand men only a few can write tolerable verse; not one in a thousand or perhaps in a million will ever write good poetry. But anyone of common mental and physical health can practice scientific research, whether in physics, or biology, or history or literary documents. Anyone can count the number of times in which the word ingens occurs in the Aeneid and compare the proportion of its frequency there with some other Latin poem. Anyone can test style by mere number; it takes special talent to savor style, and it takes genius to understand it fully."

"Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing."

"Nothing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire."

"Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold, exceedingly bold indeed; and the masses of doubt that are floating about would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth, and still can drink strong ale, Oh?let us put it away to infallible truth, that always shall prevail. [semi-chorus:] And thank the Lord for the temporal sword, and howling heretics too; and all good things our Christendom brings, but especially barley brew!"

"Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried The doctors gave them physic, and they died. But here's a happier age: for now we know Both how to make men sick and keep them so."

"Of three in One and One in three my narrow mind would doubting be till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met and all at once were Juliet."

"Of courtesy it is much less than courage of heart or holiness yet in my walks it seems to me that the Grace of God is in courtesy."

"Oh! let us never, never doubt what nobody is sure about!"

"Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about."

"Oh, my friends, be warned by me, that breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, are all human frame requires."

"Of what is done much better by a watch."

"Ownership by delegation is a contradiction in terms. When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property-such as a Town Park-and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care of the affection of a thing which is his own."

"One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind."

"Ownership is not a general feature of our society, determining its character. On the contrary, dependence on a precarious wage at the will of others is the general feature of our society."

"Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world."

"Physicians of the Utmost Fame were called at once; but when they came they answered, as they took their Fees, "There is no Cure for this Disease.""

"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right."

"Professional politics is a trade in which the sly outweigh the wise."

"Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century."

"Put you hand before your eyes and remember, you that have walked, the places from which you have walked away, and the wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment ... It is your business to leave all that you have know altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head - go forward."

"Science cannot be opposed to truth, for it is no less than a part of truth itself, as discovered in a particular sphere. But those who practice physical science may have a corporate spirit which is warped, opposed to true philosophy and therefore to beauty and to goodness. That is exactly what has happened in the development of physical science and of the so-called "scientific" criticism of documents during the last two centuries. The misfortune has happened because the advance in scientific method came after the break-up of Europe and of our common religion. The Process is now reaching its climax in an effort to persuade men against the belief in a beneficent conscious omnipotent Creator, the moral sense and the freedom of the will."

"Remote and ineffectual don."

"Skepticism may be defined as that attitude of the mind which advises us to reject any unaccustomed statement. By "unaccustomed" I mean "That which the hearer does not happen to have acquaintance with, so that it jars with that conception of reality which he has formed through his experience.""

"Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State."

"So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep: so pledge my waking from the gift of sleep, and, sacramental, raise me the Divine: strong brother in God and last companion, Wine."

"Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant."

"Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death."

"Steep are the seas and savaging and cold in broken waters terrible to try; and vast against the winter night the world, and harborless for any sail to lie. But you shall lead me to the lights, and I shall hymn you in a harbor story told. This is the faith that I have held and hold, and this is that in which I mean to die."

"Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game."

"That exasperating quality for which we have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our clothes."

"Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking...Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place."