Irving Babbitt
People will not consent in the long run to look up to those who are not themselves looking up to something higher than their ordinary selves. A leading class that
People will not consent in the long run to look up to those who are not themselves looking up to something higher than their ordinary selves. A leading class that
Powerful cultural forces are indeed pushing us towards unity, a barbarian unity built on the loss, the forgetting of tradition. One such force is the barbarity of totalitarianism of the
There is a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking. Some men listen with an abstracted air, which shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. Or
The Hindu emphasis on inner life seems to many leaders of our generation, apostles of success and efficiency, a sheer waste of time. We are asked to go out and
According to the ancient story, there is a god who holds in his hands the beginning and end and middle of all things, and straight he marches in the cycle
We should think of the most authoritative part of our soul as a guardian spirit given by god, living in the summit of the body, which can properly be said
We must reject the conception of education professed by those who say that they can put into the mind knowledge that was not there before – rather as if they
‘My dear Socrates’, said Glaucon, ‘anyone with any sense knows there is no limit short of a lifetime when one’s discussing this sort of thing. Don’t worry about us and
For just as physicians who care for the body believe that the body cannot get any benefit from any food offered to it until all obstructions are removed, so, my
There are indeed mistakes made, through the fault of our advisors, who teach us how to debate and not how to live; there are also mistakes made by the pupils,
You must purify your own ruling faculty, and hold to this plan of life. ‘From this time forth, the material I must work upon is my own mind, as wood
Freedom of personality is a duty, it is a fulfilment of vocation, the realization of the divine idea of man, an answer to the divine call. Man ought to be