Society and the World

I don’t believe the Devil would give half as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them unpleasing.

Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists.

Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists.

A poet on Pegasus, reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be dreaded than a mounted specialist.

Society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface.

The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to^reak the bank of our answers.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted “free and equal superiority over the communities of the Old World, our people [Americans] have the most enormous appetite for Old World titles of distinction.

It is fairly obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.

It is fairly obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.

The printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes forgets which.

Great editors do not discover nor produce great authors; great authors create and produce great publishers.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.

Everywhere the basis of principle is tradition.

The preacher’s garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part.

The preacher’s garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part.

Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.

Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.

The people like neither the true nor the simple; they like novels and charlatans.