Writers From Kentucky

"In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves."

"It is the tendency of the study of science to make us patient, humble and attentive to the smallest things. Is not this part of religion?"

"The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good."

"If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous."

"Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously."

"As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons."

"To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them."

"He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more."

"Each individual bears within himself an ideal man, and to bring him forth in perfect form is his divinely imposed life-work."

"More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live."

"There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious."

"As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy."

"The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth."

"It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept."

"To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one’s self the ill will of many."

"We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads."

"The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions."

"Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received."

"In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed."

"What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others."

"Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority."

"One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant."

"A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection."

"Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory."

"We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?"

"Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative."

"To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all."

"If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain."

"They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children."

"As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them."

"The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct."

"It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign."

"Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain."

"We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see."

"As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best."

"A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun."

"The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth."

"We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul."

"The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others."

"However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once."

"The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world."

"Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy."

"True readers … are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life."

"The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?"

"The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good."

"In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement."

"It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being, leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business."

"Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair."

"The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|"

"Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble."