Quotes to inspire and reflect

The English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.

DULL. . . . Not exhilarating; not delightful; as, to make dictionaries is dull work .

I have studiously endeavored to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of English undefiled , as the pure sources of genuine diction.

But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven .

Such is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.

To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

[ Response to suggestion that it was inappropriate for him as a cardinal to ski, ca. 1968 :] It is unbecoming for a cardinal to ski badly.

The culture of life means respect for nature and protection of God’s work of creation. In a special way, it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end.

This right [to join a free trade union] is not given to us by the State. . . . This right is given by the Creator.

The social progress, order, security, and peace of each country are necessarily linked with the social progress, order, security, and peace of every other country.

It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.

[ Remark to Apple employees, 1982 :] It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

[ Inviting John Sculley, then president of PepsiCo, to join Apple Computer :] Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

[ Description of the Macintosh computer :] Insanely great.

Merdre!

My thesis . . . is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion .

I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things.

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri- fication . Its validity is the process of its valid- ation .

First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.

The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

A genuine first-hand religious experience . . . is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.

One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

Religion . . . is a man’s total reaction upon life.

Although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

Some people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are . They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses.

In its widest possible sense . . . a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his , not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life .

The best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “ This is the real me!”

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

[ On experiencing his initial stroke :] So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!

The war has used up words.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art . . . what we are talking about—& the only way to know it is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions & possibilities I didn’t embrace .

The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.

The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

The fatal futility of Fact.

The terrible fluidity of self-revelation .

In art economy is always beauty.