The Egyptians enjoyed a great variety of diseases, though they had to die of them without knowing their Greek names.
All those fascinating varieties of terrain – mountains and valleys, fiords and straits, gulfs and streams – that make Europe a panorama of diverse delight, have broken the population of a minor continent into a score of peoples cherishing their differences, and self-imprisoned in their heritage of hate.
Intellectualism – the conception of man as above all a thinking animal, consciously adapting means to rationally chosen ends – fell sick with Rousseau, took to its bed with Kant, and died with Schopenhauer.
Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or not much wanted.
For as no perfect view of a country can be taken from a flat; so it is impossible to discover the remote and deep parts of any science by standing upon the level of the same science, or without ascending to a higher.
Only a philosopher can be happy in marriage, and philosophers do not marry.
He had the philosopher’s disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.
Having first determined the question according to his will, man then resorts to experience; and bending her into conformity with his placets, leads her about like a captive in a procession.
The moment man begins to take thought of the morrow he passes out of the Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety; the pale cast of worry settles down upon him, greed is sharpened, property begins, and the good cheer of the “thoughtless” native disappears.
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition.
Our individual separateness is in a sense illusory; we are parts of the great stream of law and cause, parts of God; we are the flitting forms of a being greater than ourselves, and endless while we die. Our bodies are cells in the body of the race, our race is an incident in the drama of life; our minds are the fitful flashes of eternal light.
Voltaire learned that he was again on the way to the Bastille. Like a good philosopher, he took to his heels – merely utilizing the occasion to elope with another man’s wife.
As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is the scourge of the fashionable world. In middle class the ennui is represented by the Sundays and want by the weekdays.
Where there is no strife there is decay:.
And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows – the more intelligent he is – the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.
Nothing could be so injurious to health as the Stoic repression of desire; what is the use of prolonging a life which apathy has turned into premature death?
It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well.
The first principle of his policy was that the various peoples of his empire should be left free in their religious worship and beliefs, for he fully understood the first principle of statesmanship – that religion is stronger than the state.
By imagination and reason we turn experience into foresight; we become the creators of our future, and cease to be the slaves of our past.