Pacifists

"If the abstraction is truly made well above the animal nature in man—his gregarious nature—it will keep the ancient rituals of his higher nature as long as possible. Human abstractions if true usually become ritual."

"Success was misunderstood as essential to progress. Really success was worse than failure."

"Different were the prophets of the human soul."

"But soon this saving virtue appeared to me in our disgraceful dilemma: Realization that any true cultural significance our American free society could know lay in the proper use of the machine as a tool and used only as a tool."

"Everywhere these inventions of science by ignorant misuse of a new technique were wiping out the artist."

"To survive, our American art was cheating itself of life."

"The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic."

""Yes, that is the equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead"."

"Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?"

""The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn"."

"And shall the Schoolmen die? And shall the Schoolmen die? Five hundred men of Lilliput Will know the reason why."

"They (the enemy) pottered off through Idiot's Utterly, High Hiccough, Malpaquet Middling and Mome."

"A Humble PRESENT to Our Female MOUNTAIN + From the CITIZENS + BOROUGH of LILLIPUT in EXILE"

"He (the Professor) was a failure but did his best to hide it. One of his failings was that he could barely write, except in a twelfth century hand, in Latin, with abbreviations."

"When she (Maria) had come abreast of the little island of Mistress Masham's Repose, she began to feel piratical. Swouns and Slids, she said to herself, but you could slap her vitals if she did not careen there, and perhaps dig up some buried treasure while about it."

"She (Maria) lived in an enormous house in the wilds of Northamptonshire, which was about four times longer than Buckingham Palace, but was falling down."

"Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically -- to those who hardly think about us in return."

"Ther days may come,/Ther days may go,/But still the light of Mem'ry weaves/Those gentle dreams/Of long ago"

"I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not."

"Aviators live by hours, not by days."

"Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad."

"The fisherman fishes as the urchin eats cream buns, from lust."

"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment."

"Little child Who was me once, My pity on you— And reverence.If we could meet Where I once strayed, The betrayer And the betrayed.If we could win back In Time's defiance, Would you be afeared of me, Ten-year-old Terence?No, you would not fear. You would love, trust, Cherish, admire This tedious dust.For oh! we were all brimming once With the sun-sparkled dew. One heart could have loved this hulk— The ignorant heart of you."

"Be kind, Helen, I am so tired of thinking; There are so many difficult corridors of thought, With equal iron banisters leading back again: So many stone stairs, Helen, up which I sought To rediscover the windy sky, and stand, blinking, In the lost sunlight: as bright as pain, Helen. I would give almost anything now Even for pain."

"Helen whose face was fatal must have wept Many salt tears to keep her eyes so bright Many long nights alone: and every night Men died, she cried, and happy Paris kept Sweet Helen."

"God is love, the bishops tell. Yes, I know, But love is hell."

"God is love, the parson whined. Yes, and is he also blind?"

"The once and future king."

"“Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion," said Merlyn with the deepest sincerity, "are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth. Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think. If ever a true politician really thinks a subject out dispassionately, even Homo stultus will be compelled to accept his findings in the end. Opinion can never stand beside truth. At present, however, Homo impoliticus is content either to argue with opinions or to fight with his fists, instead of waiting for the truth in his head. It will take a million years, before the mass of men can be called political animals.”"

""We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”"

"“I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe.”"

"“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”"

"It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life."

"He did not preach and did not warn and did not dream that his example would be an ideal and a comfort to innumerable people. He simply acted out of inner necessity."

"There, in this sorry world of ours, is a great man!"

"Few authors in modern times can be said to have redirected the course of an entire field of study. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer did, with his brilliant monograph, The Quest of the Historical Jesus... Schweitzer was convinced that Jesus was an apocalypticist. Schweitzer is best known, of course, for his humanitarian endeavors. After giving up an extraordinarily promising academic career as a philosopher-theologian in Strasbourg to establish a medical mission in French Equatorial Africa, he spent his life curing the sick in his jungle clinic, far removed from the ivy towers of the European intellectual scene. ... The bulk of his book recounts the attempts since the Enlightenment to produce a life of Jesus. With scathing wit, penetrating analysis, and inimitable turns of phrase, Schweitzer shows that every generation of scholars that attempted to write a life of Jesus in fact portrayed Jesus in its own image. ... Schweitzer demonstrates this thesis through an exhaustive analysis of the entire history of scholarship on Jesus—from its beginnings in 1776 with a posthumously published account of a German scholar named H. Reimarus, who argued that Jesus was a political revolutionary whose violent activities were covered up by the Gospel writers, to the rationalist views of Heinrich Paulus and the myth-oriented response of D. F. Strauss... on down to his own day. ... he scorns every attempt to make Jesus into a modern man, who promoted, in substance, the religious, political, cultural, or social agenda of modern European intellectuals. For Schweitzer, Jesus was a man of the past. To understand what he was really like, we must situate him in his own context, not pretend that he fits perfectly well into our own. ... Schweitzer did not think that the historical Jesus shared the problems or perspectives of the twentieth century. Instead, Jesus was a first-century apocalypticist, who never expected that there would be a twentieth century. He thought that the end of the world was coming within his own lifetime. In fact, he expected it to come before the year was out. When it didn't come, Schweitzer argued, Jesus decided that he himself needed to suffer in order for God to bring the heavenly Kingdom here to earth. And so he went to his cross fully expecting God to intervene in history in a climactic act of judgment. When at his last meal he told his disciples that he would not drink wine again until he drank it anew with them in the Kingdom, he was not thinking that this would be two thousand years hence, but in the next day or two. It turns out that Jesus was wrong. He died on the cross mistaken about his own identity and the plan of God."

"To me, Dr. Schweitzer is the one truly great individuals our modern times have produced."

"I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you."

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

"Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation."

"The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust."

"Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others."

"Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men but that of the whole creation. From this community of suffering I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of the burden of pain which lies upon the world."

"Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it."

"Don't let your hearts grow numb. Stay alert. It is your soul which matters."

"I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late."

"The man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts — such man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death."

"Whoever has looked into the eyes of Jesus as he appears to us in his words knows that true happiness consists of service to this great One and his Spirit — and a life offered to his work. Those who accept this mode of life, who know how to live it, become brothers and sisters."

"Those who thank God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, whatever the experience."