I, who have preached and pamphleteered like any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are of no use, and would be no use ...if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Marx, Mill, Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with Euripides, More, Montaigne, Molière, Baumarchais, Swift, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Jesus, and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some sort I am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept every plunder, and submit to every oppression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the... inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »