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Quotes from Fallen Leaves — Will Durant

1885–1981 United States

← All quotes by Will Durant

21 quotes

Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Time, subjectively, is the conscious sequence of perceptions.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

She is a woman now, and not an idle girl, not a domestic ornament or a sexual convenience anymore.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

A sensation is the feeling of an external stimulus or an internal condition.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

By mind I mean the totality of perceptions, memories and ideas in an organism.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Here and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. All life living at the expense of life, every organism eating other organisms forever.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Space, subjectively, is the coexistence of perceptions — perceiving two objects at once.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Man is as young as the risks he takes.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

As we find a place in the economic world the rebellion of youth subsides; we disapprove of earthquakes when our feet are on the earth. We forget then the radicalism then in a gentle liberalism — which is radicalism softened with the consciousness of a bank account.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.

Fallen Leaves (2014)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Will Durant (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.