[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our first line of defense in raising children with values is modeling good behavior ourselves. This is critical. How will our kids... learn tolerance for others if our hearts are filled with hate? Learn compassion if we are indifferent? Perceive academics as important if soccer practice is a higher priority than homework?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds ...are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some crimes get honor and renown by being committed with more pomp, by a greater number, and in a higher degree of wickedness than... others. Hence it is that public robberies, plunderings, and sackings have been looked upon as excellencies and noble achievements, and the seizing of whole countries, however unjustly and barbarously, is dignified with the glorious name of gaining conquests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... our scholarships should be bestowed on those whose ability and earnestness in the primary department have been proved, and who...se capacity for a higher education is fully shown. This is the best work women of wealth can do, and I hope in the future they will endow scholarships for their own sex instead of giving millions of dollars to institutions for boys, as they have done in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are not concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather a higher poetical truth. We seem to hear the music of a though...t, and care not if the understanding be not gratified.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader ...is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am glad to read what you say of his social nature. I think I may say that he was wholly unpretending; and there was this peculia...rity in his aim, that though he had pecuniary difficulties to contend with the greater part of his life, he always studied how to make a good article, pencil or other (for he practiced various arts), and was never satisfied with what he had produced. Nor was he ever disposed in the least to put off a poor one for the sake of pecuniary gain,--as if he labored for a higher end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independ...ent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... peace is a militant thing ... any peace movement must have behind it a higher passion than the desire for war. No one can be a... pacifist without being ready to fight for peace and die for peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »