I cannot call Riches better than the baggage of virtue. The Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army, s...o is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human ...imaginative values which science has evolved.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Conceptual relativism is a heady and exotic doctrine, or would be if we could make good sense of it. The trouble is, as so often i...n philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the excitement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To lift, to fetch, to drive, to shed, to pen, Are acts I recognize, with all they mean... Of shepherding the unruly, for a kind of Controlled woolgathering is my work too.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang f...rom a boot-lace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is still a great deal of legalism in the Old Testament idea of sin. The emphasis in the Sermon on the Mount is very differen...t from that in the commandments that Moses brought down from Sinai. The commandments have been translated into beatitudes. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth," is not a sentence one could read in the Old Testament without a jolt, but by the time we reach it in the New Testament, we have been prepared for it. It is set in the context of the rest of Christ's life and teaching. Without that example the sentence carries little conviction because there is no evidence that the meek do or ever will inherit the earth. We have been turned away from a concern merely with our outward acts, to contemplate what lies most deep in our innermost selves, hidden from all but ourselves and God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is curious to speculate why pornography is considered especially likely to stimulate its readers into performing the activities... described. The literature of murder is a vast one, particularly in the English language; enormous ingenuity is expended by writers in devising techniques for killing people, and these techniques are described with the greatest possible realism. The motives which would make murder desirable or profitable are so elaborated that they could easily persuade a reader into whose hands these books would be likely to fall that their case was parallel with that described in the book so that their problems could be solved in the same way. But I have never seen it seriously suggested that the literature of murder--detective stories or crime stories--tended to deprave and corrupt, or would incite weak-minded or immature readers into carrying out in reality the activities described in the fantasies. On the contrary, the literature of murder is considered particularly "healthy" and desirable; and in England representatives of all the most respected professions have stated that detective stories are among their favorite reading. Musing about murder is apparently "healthy"; musing about sexual enjoyment is not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »