Category: Thought

Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically. We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, “here and now” without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-​blank. And culture, which is but its interpretation, cannot wait any more than can life itself.

José Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University [Misión de la Universidad (1930; translation © 1944, first published 1946), p. 73, translated by Howard Lee Nostrand. 

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Vol. X, “Political Morality.”

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, simply corporall, or purely spirituall?

Michel de Montaigne, as quoted in Why We Should Read ——, by S. P. B. Mais (1921).

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Vol. VII, “Treason.”

Without great men and without clear convictions this age is nevertheless very active intellectually: it is studious, empirical, inventive, sympathetic. Its wisdom consists in a certain contrite openness of mind; it flounders, but at least in floundering it has gained a sense of possible depths in all directions.

George Santayana, as quoted in Why We Should Read ——, by S. P. B. Mais (1921).

I was battered and bruised, but the king was amused
And before the siesta, he made me his jester
And I found out soon, that to be a buffoon
Was a serious thing as a rule!
For a jester’s chief employment,
is to kill himself for your enjoyment
And a jester unemployed is nobody’s fool!

Sung by Danny Kaye, playing Hubert Hawkins, in The Court Jester (1955), movie writing credits to Norman Panama and Melvin Frank but lyrics credited to Sammy Cahn.