A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.

Furthermore, how will you endure the Romanists' terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

One's language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. ... Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.

Emptiness simply prevents what is individual from insisting on itself.

The Crown of Great Britain cannot, in my opinion, be too magnificent. Let us see some great public works set on foot; let it never be said, that the Commons of Great Britain failed in what they owe to the first Crown in the world. Looking up to royalty, I do say, it is the oldest and one of the best parts of our constitution. I wish it should look like royalty; that it should look like a King; like a King of Great Britain.

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived.

We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is Just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. " In India, our religions wIll never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian Wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.

The philosophy of physics is continuous with physics itself. Just as certain issues in the Foundations of Mathematics have been discussed by both mathematicians and by philosophers of mathematics, so certain issues in the philosophy of physics have been discussed by both physicists and by philosophers of physics. And just as there are issues of a more epistemological kind that tend to concern philosophers of mathematics more than they do working mathematicians, so there are issues that concern philosophers of physics more than they do working physicists.

Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.

Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations-as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness-nature pops up with her inescapable demands.

The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.

Freedom of Men under Government is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; a Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man: as Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

This provides us with our first major clue to the solutions of the problem. Even if the left cannot see the world as full of potentiality, it can hold on to the moments of insight and refuse to let go of them. If I know that present difficulties will end in triumph, I am un-discourageable; I merely have to know it intellectually. And if I can 'know' that reality actually has a third dimension, I shall never fall into the mistake of complaining that there is nothing new under the sun and that life is futile.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person's experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experiences. If a person has a choleric temperament, for instance, his mode of reaction is "quick and strong." But what he is quick or strong about depends on his kind of relatedness, his character. If he is a productive, just, loving person he will react quickly and strongly when he loves, when he is enraged by injustice, and when he is impressed by a new idea. If he is a destructive or sadistic character, he will be quick and strong in his destructiveness or in his cruelty. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste. But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance.

Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

When in the spring the withered gray of the pastures gives place to green, this is due to the millions of young shoots which sprout up freshly from the old roots. In like manner the revival of thought which is essential for our time can only come through a transformation of the opinions and ideals of the many brought about by individual and universal reflection about the meaning of life and of the world.

There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.

When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.

The Pope will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread...and a thousand other things of the same kind.

The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?

The key to understanding Crowley is the same as the key to understanding the Marquis de Sade. Both wasted an immense amount of energy screaming defiance at the authority they resented so much, and lacked the insight to see that they were shaking their fists at an abstraction.

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

Let us maintain inviolably equality in the sacred right of suffrage: public security can never have a basis more solid.

Never find your delight in another's misfortune.

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.