Sublime

“Mankind do not acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods, but external goods by the help of virtue, and happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those w

‘It is never worth a first class man’s time to express a majority opinion. By definition, there are plenty of others to do that.’

I say that if you want an example of anything which has progressed in the moral world by the same method as science in the material world, by continually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I say that there is only one example of it. And that is Us.”

Hero-worship endures forever while man endures.

Cyril Connolly said that literature is writing meant to be read twice—everything else is mere journalism.

‘A great man shows his greatness,’ said Carlyle, ‘by the way he treats little men.’

Thales of Miletus.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

The tyrant must find not one family but many families defying his power; he must find mankind not a dust of atoms, but fixed in solid blocks of fidelity. And those human groups must support not only themselves but each other. In this sense what some call individualism is as corporate as communism.