Quotes from Robert Lynd

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

The great ages of prose are the ages in which men shave. The great ages of poetry are those in which they allow their beards to grow.

A man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer.

No doubt there are other important things in life besides conflict, but there are not many other things so inevitably interesting. The very saints interest us most when we think of them as enganged in a conflict with the Devil.

There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.

In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.

Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.

A cat is only technically an animal, being divine.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

The days on which one has been the most inquisitive are among the days on which one has been happiest.

There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evildoer.

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.

It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that one has never heard before.

No human being believes that any other human being has a right to be in bed when he himself is up.

The man who will not defend the honour of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything.

If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats.

It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.

great poetry marches along the path that leads to abundance of life, and not to a feeble and degenerate egotism. The

History may be read as the story of the magnificent rearguard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

It is in games that many men discover their paradise.

And it is in games that many men discover their paradise.

It may be said that every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.