For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

There is a class of writers who are ever boasting of the progress of civilization and of the human mind in modern times. If we were to credit their pretensions, we should be led to believe that the science of society had reached its highest degree of perfection, because old metaphysical and economic theories have been somewhat refined upon.In answer to their boasts of social progress, it is not sufficient to refer to the deeply-rooted social evils which exist, and which prey upon our boasted civilized social order. We will mention but a single one, the frightful increase of national debts and of taxation.

It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.

But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.

We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not "fanatical." That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens.

The detour to ideality leads to coinciding with oneself, that is, to certainty, which remains the guide and guarantee of the whole spiritual adventure of being.

People often say to me, You don't know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I don't and I'm very glad I don't. And they don't know what I feel. ... I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience.

A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. ... Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. ... that by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the blood-stained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

With Gutenberg Europe enters the technological phase of progress, when change itself becomes the archetypal norm of social life.

Habit... makes the endurance of evil easy (which, under the name of patience, is falsely honored as a virtue), because sensations of the same type, when continued without alteration for a long time, draw our attention away from the senses so that we are scarcely conscious of them at all. On the other hand, habit also makes the consciousness and the remembrance of good that has been received more difficult, which then gradually leads to ingratitude (a real vice). [...] Acquired habit deprives good actions of their moral value because it undermines mental freedom and, moreover, it leads to thoughtless repetitions of the same acts (monotony), and thus becomes ridiculous.

Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!

And what can be more divine than the exhalations of the earth, which affect the human soul so as to enable her to predict the future ? And could the hand of time evaporate such a virtue? Do you suppose you are talking of some kind of wine or salted meat ?

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis & Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.

We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot 'see' how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.

It is an article of faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a Virgin.

A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality. ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism.

Marcus Aurelius wrote the following about Severus (a person who is not clearly identifiable according to the footnote): Through him I became acquainted with the conception of a community based on equality and freedom of speech for all, and of a monarchy concerned primarily to uphold the liberty of the subject.

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers, why make such game of this poor life of ours?

To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.

Pursue Virtue virtuously.

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.

Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.

The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust.

The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't.

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.