💬 Quotes

"Fair seed-time had my soul, like I was fostered even by beauty and by fear."

"A motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things."

"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, and giv'st to forms and images a breath and everlasting motion..."

"The mind of man is framed even like the breath and harmony of music."

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!"

"Imagination—here the Power so called through sad incompetence of human speech, that awful power rose from the mind's abyss."

"I would prefer not to."

"Ah, humanity! existing just beneath the utmost Ulcer of melancholy."

"It was not that I reined him in, or administered any painful rebuke; it was all together from an innate modesty, befitting merit greater than his."

"Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by office filled with dead letters, and sadder than either."

"At present I prefer not to be a little reasonable: it is not yet time."

"Strangely moping and grieving, and at the same time knowing, and seemingly feeling, that no peculiar distress is mine."

"Social cohesion is a necessity, but so is individual initiative. If civilization is to progress, it is necessary that individual men and women should have scope for creative impulses, and that these impulses should not be stifled by an over-organized society."

"The growth of vast industrial enterprises and the increasing complexity of the modern state have necessarily diminished the part which the individual can play in determining his own destiny."

"Cohesion is of two sorts: one spontaneous and unthinking, the other deliberate and state-enforced. In a complex society, spontaneous cohesion is impossible, and therefore reliance must be placed upon government."

"Work and government are the two chief sources of fear and hope in modern life. If men are to be happy, they must not only feel secure, but they must feel that their work is worthwhile and that they have some say in how it is directed."

"It is characteristic of a healthy society that it should be capable of combining a high degree of organization with a high degree of individual freedom, but this is an extremely difficult achievement."

"The impulses of the prophet and the artist are dangerous to established institutions, yet without them, societies stagnate and eventually decay. Wisdom consists in finding a framework within which these rare impulses can be tolerated and even encouraged."

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one 'object' of love."