Quotes from Will Durant

Works like this are as a mirror: if an ass looks in you cannot expect an angel to look out";

Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?

Toward 1175 rich veins of copper, silver, and gold were found in the Erz Gebirge (i.e., ore mountains); Freiberg, Goslar, and Annaberg became the centers of a medieval "gold rush"; and from the little town of Joachimsthal came the word joachimsthaler—meaning coins mined there—and, by inevitable shortening, the German and English words thaler and dollar.

Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates. No mechanistic account or materialistic philosophy can do it justice, or understand the silent growth and majesty of a tree, or compass the longing and laughter of children.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

There is nevertheless a value in painting these pictures of our desire; man's significances is that he can image a better world, and will some part of it at least into reality; man is an animal that makes Utopias. (p.47/543)

Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do; and you shall live prosperously.

Do you know," asks Emerson, "the secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him; and In that I am his pupil.

The object of science is the universal that contains many particulars; the object of art is the particular that contains a universal.

Great men speak to us only so far as we have ears and souls to hear them; only so far as we have in us the roots, at least, of that which flowers out in them.

Severe penalties were laid upon them for striking their husbands, wives were not allowed to go out in public unveiled, and strict fidelity was exacted of them—though their husbands might have all the concubines they could afford.

Victory breeds hatred

Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war.

The man who does not wish to be merely one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself.

In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.

For statesmanship is a science and an art; one must have lived for it and been long prepared. Only a philosopher-king is fit to guide a nation. "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and wisdom and political leadership meet in the same man, . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race" (473). This is the key-stone of the arch of Plato's thought.

Kant is the last person in the world whom we should read on Kant.

Religions of hope and love are a luxury of security and order; the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious people made most primitive religions cults of mystery and dread.

The ancient [pagan] faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods.

All profound utterances have varied facets for diverse minds.

Meanwhile the old "laughing philosopher" was cultivating his garden at Ferney; this "is the best thing we can do on earth.

As submissive natures unite with masterful individuals to make the order and operation of a society, so the imitative majority follows the innovating minority, and this follows the originative individual, in adapting new responses to the demands of environment or survival. History in the large is the conflict of minorities; the majority applauds the victor and supplies the human material of social experiment.

a barbarian was a man content to believe without reason and to live without liberty.

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Now