The self is the class (not the collection) of the experiences (or autopsychological states). The self does not belong to the expre...ssion of the basic experience, but is constructed only on a very high level.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been ...said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival c...an ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in 'f...oreign commerce' on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves--this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, t...he moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding... Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nearly a million species of animals are already known. Of these, only a few thousand are endowed with anything which can be called... intelligence, only a few tens with high intelligence, and only one with conceptual thought. In the same way, there are hundreds of known religions; it had better be left to more orthodox writers than myself to enumerate those which can be called high religions. Animal evolution witnesses to a central upward trend of biological progress; it also shows us the retention of low types along with high, the throwing out of blind-alley side branches of specialisation at every level, and sometimes even degeneration. Religious evolution also shows a central progress--but equally the production of bizarre side-branches, the permanent confining of the religious spirit in low-level embodiments, its projection into every conceivable cul-de-sac, its too frequent bending over from upward to downward growth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lowe...r mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his he...aven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its cove...s grape-vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle.... But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »