17 quotes
Personality is the knowledge that we are apart from the rest of the universe.
What we live by (1932)
The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.
What we live by (1932)
Most people suspend their judgment till somebody else has expressed his own and then they repeat it. Common parlance alludes to this weakness in the frequently heard phrase: PEOPLE DO NOT THINK.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.
What we live by (1932)
You are not to disbelieve human science or think human reason invalid except when they venture outside their province.
What we live by (1932)
Very busy people always find time for everything.
Conversely, people with immense leisure find time for nothing.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
Whatever we read from intense curiosity gives us a model of how we should always read.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
All men saved from the scattering influences of society by a powerful incentive, a cause, or an ideal of individual perfection, seldom fear the danger of being distracted by comers and goers.
What we live by (1932)
Where the writer produces that combination of perfect technique, human interest, and thruth, and can add to it that supreme touch, the perfection of art has been attained.
What we live by (1932)
Self-expression is individuality, and our individuality is our self, which ought to be our chief concern
The Art of Thinking (1928)
We all more or less consciously note this. We cannot help observing that all serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.
What we live by (1932)
Social intercourse, with its … hypocrisy … is highly productive of thought-hindering insincerity.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.
Every day you waste a chance, many chances in fact, of getting at your innermost consciousness by expressing yourself as you see yourself, and I say it is a pity because it makes you, year after year and day after day more like anybody else and more anonymous.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
Ideas are the root of creation.
to Dimnet in: Prima (1998)
Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions. We also forget that genius is not genius all the time, although it is superior all the time.
The Art of Thinking (1928)
The more a man thinks the better adapted he becomes to thinking, and education is nothing if it is not the methodical creation of the habit of thinking. Precisely. Theoretically, education is a mental training aiming at greater intellectual elasticity, but the question is whether education does not often strain, instead of train, a mind.
The Art of Thinking (1928)