Category: Thought

Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.

The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

Herbert Spencer, “On Manners and Fashion,” The Westminster Review (April 1854), as reprinted in Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, Vol. III (D. Appleton, 1891).

An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chap. VIII: “The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence.”

There is a scale in the meaning of the word socialist. In France it means about the same thing as a communist, when one uses plain language. When one uses the language of Monsieur Drumont, it means a Jew. In England a socialist is equal to a French conservative republican. In America it means a thief. In Germany it means an ingenious individual of restricted financial resources, who generally fails to blow up some important personage with wet dynamite. In Italy a socialist is an anarchist pure and simple, who wishes to destroy everything existing for the sake of dividing a wealth which does not exist at all. It also means a young man who orders a glass of water and a toothpick at a cafe, and is able to talk politics for a considerable time on this slender nourishment.

Francis Marion Crawford, Marzio’s Crucifix (1887).

The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.

Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), Appendix: A Glance at Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature.

The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people.

Stephen Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1893.