Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the e...ffect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet companion that i...s alike the lion and the dove; and prayer will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material world; she has taken possession of it; for, like the sun, she casts about it a sphere of light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Often, while contemplating works of art, not in their easily perceptible materiality, in the too-clear hieroglyphs of their contou...rs or the obvious meaning of their subject, but in the soul with which they are endowed, in the atmospheric impression that they convey, in the spiritual light or darkness which they pour into our souls, I have felt entering into me a kind of vision of the childhood of their creators. Some little sorrow, some small pleasure of the child, inordinately inflated by an exquisite sensibility, become later on in the adult man, even without his knowing it, the basis of a work of art.... Genius is nothing but childhood clearly formulated, newly endowed with virile and powerful means of self-expression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn t...oday from the humanities as well as from the scientists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficien...t, philanthropic self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine whic...h has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a "life-work" of teaching, of social work--we know that we would lay it down with ...hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and de...eply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct th...eir lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings. ... they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »