Morals are not the important thing-nor enlightenment-nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the need of the body, not of the mind and spirit.
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Everything progresses in waves. The march of civilization, the progression of worlds, is in waves. All human activities likewise progress in waves - art, literature, science, religion.
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application.
To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.
Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.