We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and — our former riches.
Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. [“In Praise of Idleness,” In Praise of Idleness: And Other Essays , New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972, p. 14.]
Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit=--It is absurd that he should govern others, who knows not how to govern himself.
Wearers of rings and chains! / Pray do not take the pains / To set me right. / In vain my faults ye quote; / I write as others wrote / On Sunium's height.
Audiatur et altera pars=--Let the other side also have a hearing.
The figures of men have gestures which correspond to what they are doing, so that in seeing them you understand what they are thinking of and saying; and these will be learned well by him who will copy the gestures of the dumb, for they speak by the gestures of their hands, their eyes, their brows and their whole person, when they wish to express the purpose of their mind. And do not mock me because I suggest a dumb teacher for the teaching of an art of which he is himself ignorant, because he will teach you better by his gestures than all the others with their words. And despise not such advice because they are the masters of gesture, and understand at a {118} distance what a man is talking of if he suits the actions of the hands to the words.
External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself.
Charity lies between two charities--one to yourself, the other to your needy fellow man.
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us An' ev'n Devotion.
So with pictures seen from too near or too far; there is but one precise point from which to look at them, all others are too near or too far, too high or too low. Perspective determines that precise point in the art of painting. But who shall determine it in truth or morals?
Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc illuc impellitur=--While the mind is in suspense, a very little sways it one way or other.
The irony of history is nowhere more apparent than in science. Here we see the men, over whose minds the coming events of the world of biology cast their shadows, doing their best to spoil their case in stating it; while the man who represented sound scientific method is doing his best to stay the inevitable progress of thought and bolster up antiquated traditions. The progress of knowledge during the last seventy years enables us to see that neither Geoffroy, nor Cuvier, was altogether right nor altogether wrong; and that they were meant to hunt m couples instead of pulling against one another. Science has need of servants of very different qualifications; of artistic constructors no less than of men of business; of people to design her palaces and of others to see that the materials are sound and well-fitted together; of some to spur investigators, and of others to keep their heads cool. The only would-be servants, who are entirely unprofitable, are those who do not take the trouble to interrogate Nature, but imagine vain things about her; and spin, from their inner consciousness, webs, as exquisitely symmetrical as those of the most geometrical of spiders, but alas! as easily torn to pieces by some inconsidered bluebottle of a fact.
If you would have it well done, you must do it yourself; you must not leave it to others.
There is no other ghost save the ghost of our own childhood, the ghost of our own innocence, the ghost of our own airy belief.
Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him.
Christ saw that men took life painfully. To some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden of life had been the whole world's problem. It is still the whole world's problem. And here is Christ's solution. "Carry it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look at it from My point of view. Interpret it upon My principles. Take My yoke and learn of Me, and you will find it easy. For My yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon the shoulders, and THEREFORE My burden is light." Pax Vobiscum, p. 44.
Our Country,--whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less,--still our Country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
Whoso turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the evils which now afflict, as well as of those which threaten us, lies in this: that false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have crept into all the orders of the state, and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses. For since it is in the very nature of man to follow the guide of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all his will soon follows; and thus it happens that looseness of intellectual opinion influences human actions and perverts them. Whereas, on the other hand, if men be of sound mind and take their stand on true and solid principles, there will result a vast amount of benefits for the public and private good. [ ?terni Patris (“On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy”), §2, 1879.]
Scientific observation tell us that living birds form a group or class of animals, through which a certain form of skeleton runs; and that this kind of skeleton differs in certain well-defined characters from that of mammals. On the other hand, if anyone utterly ignorant of osteology, but endowed with the artistic sense of form, were set before a bird skeleton and a mammalian skeleton, he would at once see that the two were similar and yet different. Very likely he would be unable to give clear expression to his just sense of the differences and resemblances; perhaps he would make great mistakes in detail if he tried. Nevertheless, he would be able to draw from memory a couple of sketches, in which all the salient points of likeness and unlikeness would be reproduced with sufficient accuracy. The mere osteologist, however accurately he might put the resemblances and differences into words, if he lacked the artistic visualising faculty, might be hopelessly incompetent to perform any such feat; lost in details, it might not even occur to him that it was possible; or, still more probably, the habit of looking for differences might impair the perception of resemblances.
Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.
Workers would have a deeper interest in the success of the enterprise with which they are identified if they knew they would get a share of the profits each year….Experience has shown that productivity rises substantially under such an incentive system so that the higher pay to workers is not inflationary. There are other benefits to be derived…. Any program which gives employees a share of a company’s earnings would certainly induce more cooperation towards greater profits and fewer strikes. [ U. S. News and World Report .]
Mais de quoi sont composees les affaires du monde? Du bien d'autrui=--By of what is the business of the world made up? Of the wealth of other people.
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. ― Anatole France
Men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged {12} and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. Little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it I might include them with herds of cattle.
~Valentine.~--Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.--_Charles Lamb._
There is no evasion of this moral responsibility of all the nations and especially of the most powerful nations for that peace and justice which, together with the security of one’s own nation, is the object of foreign policy. Too many people who eagerly draw up perfect blueprints for world organization are secretly influenced by the expectation that after the establishment of such legal institutions they will get rid of the continuous responsibility of a burdensome foreign policy. They have fallen into the same fallacy as the classical liberal economists, namely, that if a certain set of legal institutions should be introduced, then out of the individuals’ efforts to pursue their unrestricted self-interest the social harmony would automatically ensue. The result was, of course, not social harmony but the power struggle of collective interests, class struggles, and the like. If in the national order the merely legalistic concept of the state according to the liberal pattern is impossible, a complete juridification of the international order will be even less possible. On World Peace, Justice and Charity . Too many of the planners, moreover, have an optimistic though mechanistic psychology according to which man is the creature of his institutional environment, that is, he is a bundle of causal reactions to the primary acting environmental and objective institutional factors. But this psychology of determinism forgets that man is conditioned and motivated, but not causally determined, by these institutional factors. There remains a residual sphere beyond all causal determinations, where man is morally free and can become truly culpable, not innocently guilty as in the ancient tragedy. [Sophocles’ “Oedipus Trilogy”] Sometimes this over-all juridification is caused by a tacit rejection of man’s moral nature. And contradictions appear, such as this, that Hitler is wholly explained causally as the effect of causes that are sociological, institutional, and so on, and yet considered personally and morally guilty. Politics is an integral part of ethics, as is law. Arbitrary power must be controlled by positive law. But, that law may be enabled to do so, it must itself be backed by power responsible to the moral ideas, to the national common good. The strife among nations can be best settled if the universal law of morality, the principles of natural law as the unwritten constitution of the international community, are commonly accepted. For then power is put in the service of the fundamental moral ideas. And there is no evasion of the principle that the greater the power, influence, and prestige of a nation, the greater is its responsibility for peace and justice. Moreover, the less can this responsibility be shifted to any legal institution, however abstractly perfect, and the nation still hope to return securely to a splendid isolation and to the sole pursuit of its own national happiness. On the other hand, only after the powerful nations are ready to accept in mutual understanding their direct and inseparable responsibility for peace, only then will the legal institution work. But just as important is the perpetual will to establish justice, that is, to work for changes of the actual status quo when it has become an obviously unjust status, the continuation of which would endanger the peace of the world. Peace is the work of justice. Hence it will always be this moral will to justice that gives the legal institutions power. Without this moral will and concordant responsibility, the institutions will be empty hulks, a derision of the idea of law. Though peace, the tranquility of the order, is the work of justice, justice itself ought to be vivified by charity, based on the common brotherhood of men and on the common fatherhood of God. These three — charity vivifying justice, justice working peace, and peace being tranquility of the order — by permeating and inspiring the legal institutions, are the real guaranty for the peace of the world. [“World Peace”, The State in Catholic Thought , IV.xxxii.vii.]
It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.
If by differing we condemned, you would be right. Uniformity without diversity is useless to others, diversity without uniformity is ruinous for us. The one injures us without; the other within.
It was not lawful to sacrifice elsewhere than at Jerusalem, the place which the Lord had chosen, nor even to eat the tithes in any other place. Deut. xii. 5, etc.; Deut. xiv. 23, etc.; xv. 20; xvi. 2-15.
As a matter of fact, men sin, and the consequences of their sins affect endless generations of their progeny. Men are tempted, men are punished for the sins of others without merit or demerit of their own; and they are tormented for their evil deeds as long as their consciousness lasts.
There are two supernatural foundations of our wholly supernatural Religion, the one visible, the other invisible.
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. The process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed before-hand that caused men to make laws in the first place. [ The Law . Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1974, pp. 5-6.]
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.
Some say, compar'd to Bononcini, That Mynheer Handel 's but a ninny; Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle. Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The Jews were of two kinds, one having merely Pagan, the other having Christian affections.
Happy the man to whom Heaven has given a morsel of bread without his being obliged to thank any other for it than Heaven itself.
Improbis aliena virtus semper formidolosa est=--To wicked men the virtue of others is always matter of dread.
He who means to teach others may indeed often suppress the best of what he knows, but he must not himself be half-instructed.
But we must go on. We must! It’s what God wants us to do. It’s what he demands of us, what He has always demanded of his servants since the creation of time. And He just wants us to trust His judgment, have faith that a new day will dawn, and He never ever, ever, wants us to give up the fight. Because my friends, it is a battle of the spirit. It’s black and white. It’s good and evil - right and wrong - us against them. But this one event is just a small part of all that is pure terror and unholy evil. There’s no other explanation for it. We are at war my people, at war with Satan and all his fallen ones, and none of us will rest until Jesus Christ has returned and defeated him in that one, final and decisive battle.
It seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only ones as aren't wanted i' the other world.
Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads.
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.
And so this soul of mine is a compound of two worlds--dust and deity! It touches the boundary line of two hemispheres. It is allied on one side to the divine; on the other, to the beast of the field. Its beginning is from beneath, but its culmination is from above; it is started from the dust of the ground, but it is finished in the breath of God.
The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. One self-approving hour whole years outweighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas; And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels Than C?sar with a senate at his heels. In parts superior what advantage lies? Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 'T is but to know how little can be known; To see all others' faults, and feel our own.
_The Stoics._--They conclude that what has been done once may be done always, and that because the desire of glory gives some degree of power to those possessed by it, others can easily do the same.
Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,--to love him in others' virtues.--_Emerson._
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
The pious have always a more intimate connection with each other than the wicked, though externally the relationship may not always prosper as well.
Why insist, ye heroes, against the will of Jupiter, in pressing a Hercules into your enterprise? Know ye not that for him there is quite other work appointed, which he must do all alone, and not another with him?
As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.
Est proprium stultiti? aliorum cernere vitia, oblivisci suorum=--It is characteristic of folly to discern the faults of others and forget its own.
There is a difference between the childlike faith of a man (all real faith must be childlike) and the childlike faith of a child. The one is Paradise not yet lost, the other Paradise lost but regained. The one is right for the child, the other is right for the man. It is the will of God that it should be so--but it is also the will of God that we should all bear with each other, and join, each in his own voice, in the great hymn of praise.
Recognizing as I do that I cannot make use of {5} subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, I shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. I shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and I shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve.
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.--_Addison._
When I think of the intensity of the perturbing agencies which arise out of these and other conditions of modern European society, I confess that the attempt to counteract them by asking Governments to agree to a maximum military expenditure, does not appear to me to be worth making; indeed I think it might do harm by leading people to suppose that the desires of Governments are the chief agents in determining whether peace or war shall obtain in Europe.
Living in the spiritual world . . . is just as simple as living in the natural world; and it is the same kind of simplicity. It is the same kind of simplicity for it is the same kind of world--there are not two kinds of worlds. The conditions of life in the one are the conditions of life in the other. And till these conditions are sensibly grasped, as the conditions of all life, it is impossible that the personal effort after the highest life should be other than a blind struggle carried on in fruitless sorrow and humiliation. Natural Law, Environment, p. 257.
Virtue is an angel; but she is a blind one, and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness,--ready to forge cannon-balls or to print New Testaments, to navigate a corsair's vessel or a missionary ship.--_Horace Mann._
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
Thou hast not what others have, and others have not the gift thou hast. From this imperfection springs sociability.
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion.
Howbeit, this one thing, son, I assure you on my faith, that if the parties will at hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have right. [To a son-in-law, reported by Nicholas Harpsfield in his The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Knight, Sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, Written in the Time of Queen Mary by Nicholas Harpsfield , in Roper & Harpsfield, Live of Saint Thomas More . London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1969, p. 83.]