Will Durant quotes - page 3

A sensation is the feeling of an external stimulus or an internal condition. (Will Durant)
By mind I mean the totality of perceptions, memories and ideas in an organism. View quote
Will Durant
Time, subjectively, is the conscious sequence of perceptions. View quote
Will Durant
Space, subjectively, is the coexistence of perceptions - perceiving two objects at once. View quote
Will Durant
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. View quote
Will Durant
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. View quote
Will Durant
A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas. View quote
Will Durant
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. View quote
Will Durant
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. View quote
Will Durant
It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life. View quote
Will Durant
Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them. (Will Durant)
Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth. View quote
Will Durant
Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old. View quote
Will Durant
Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates. View quote
Will Durant
Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love? View quote
Will Durant
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. View quote
Will Durant
Youth is learning to read (which is all that one learns in school), and is learning where and how to find what he may later need to know (which is the best of the arts that he acquires in college). Nothing learned from a book is worth anything until it is used and verified in life; only then does it begin to affect behavior and desire. It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life. View quote
Will Durant
Man is as young as the risks he takes. View quote
Will Durant
See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth. View quote
Will Durant
Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity. View quote
Will Durant
To all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state? (Will Durant)
I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. ... Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again. For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth. View quote
Will Durant
Both Stoicism and Epicureanism - the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure - were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France. View quote
Will Durant
Great organizers, as much as inevitable slaves, tend to stoic moods: it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive. View quote
Will Durant
The issuance of this guaranteed currency promoted the profession and operations of finance. The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples; and the state continued to the end to use its strongly built shrines as repositories for public funds, perhaps on the theory that religious scruples would help discourage robbery. View quote
Will Durant