As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.
Instead of the machine being a giant to which the man is the pygmy, we must at last reverse the proportions until man is a giant to whom the machine is the toy.
There are remains of great and good men, which, like this mantle, ought to be gathered up and preserved by the survivors, their sayings, their writings, their examples, that, as their works follow them in the reward of them, they may stay behind in the benefit of them.
I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.
Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men
A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something.
The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.
When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soul Mate, and men looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal.
THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic?
War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.