For Africa to me ... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows ex...actly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but al...so as past, for its historical value. The same goes for the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty in which it may be clothed, but also from its essential quality of being present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Greeks have given to the world the science of history; the Israelites gave to the world historical religion. In contrast to al...l their neighbors, both peoples knew what history is; this is no consequence of their mental giftedness, however, for there is another reason. Through mighty events both peoples experienced what history is, and by the investment of their lives they made history. The peculiar mental capacity of each of the two peoples comes to the fore in the way in which they experience history and express it. For both peoples history was a source of present and future knowledge. Thucydides wrote his history because what happened would, according to human ways, surely happen again in the future in the same or a similar way. This was conceived in a genuinely Greek way, for history is an eternal repetition; nothing new happens under the sun. Even in the stream of eternally changing events the Greeks sought the unalterable, the regular occurrence. Thus they employed the same method with regard to history as with regard to nature because history was a piece of nature. For this reason their mental life can justifiably be called non-historical. If God is to be found, he must be sought in the unalterable, in mental being, in the Ideas. God revealed himself to the Israelites in history and not in Ideas; he revealed himself when he acted and created. His being was not learned through propositions but known in actions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looked upon with historical objectivity, the Catholic Church as a religion has far better prospects. Consider its unified, world-w...ide papal leadership, the methods of Catholic ecclesiastic thought, and the life-pervading sanctification of existence, both in everyday life and at great moments; add the present glory of a thousand years of art, the multitude of religious activities, the impressive power of priests and religious, spiritually rooted celibates whose existence the faith consumes; top it off with Catholic piety, based on the Church but far from its violence and political cunning, and even spreading a touch of philosophy among the populace--compared with all this, Protestantism seems poor. Yet Protestantism, whatever may be held against it, has one virtue that outweighs all flaws. It is the principle of its birth: the chance of breaking through every religious phenomenon to a new original realization. In Catholic eyes, Protestantism is purely negative. It gives up tenet after tenet, ending in what must seem to a Catholic the total disappearance of all religious essentials--the God-man, the Resurrection, the personal God, the sacraments--and it pulverizes itself by endless internal schisms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences... of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing mu...ch the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I fee...l how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of c...olors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes... of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The warning given to Louis XVI: "No, sire, this is not a rebellion, it is a revolution," accents the essential difference. It mean...s precisely that "it is the absolute certainty of a new form of government." Rebellion is, by nature, limited in scope. It is no more than an incoherent pronouncement. Revolution, on the contrary, originates in the realm of ideas. Specifically, it is the injection of ideas into historical experience, while rebellion is only the movement that leads from individual experience into the realm of ideas. While even the collective history of a movement of rebellion is always that of a fruitless struggle with facts, of an obscure protest which involves neither methods nor reasons, a revolution is an attempt to shape action to ideas, to fit the world into a theoretic frame. That is why rebellion kills men while revolution destroys both men and principles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »