Quotes

There is ... no clear and certain boundary between character which is acquired and those more or less un-educable traits of human nature, evolved during the long ages and transmitted by inheritance. We are quite unable to predict with any certainty or precision how far the individual pupil is educable

It is not easy to accept the knowledge that desire, that prayer, that effort can be and often are frustrated, that in the nature of things there is much fumbling, trial and error, deadlock and defeat.

A boy can take you into the open at night and show you the stars; he might tell you no end of things about them, conceivably all that an astronomer could teach. But until and unless he feels the vast indifference of the universe to his own fate, and has placed himself in the perspective of cold and illimitable space, he has not looked maturely at the heavens. Until he has felt this, and unless he can endure this, he remains a child, and in his childishness he will resent the heavens when they are not accommodating.

Intelligence is often more completely educated than desire; our outward behavior has an appearance of being grown up which our inner vanities and hopes, our dim but powerful cravings, often belie.

The notion that the universe is full of purposes utterly unknown to him, utterly indifferent to him, is as outrageous to one who is imperfectly matured as would be the conduct of a mother who forgot to give a hungry child its lunch

The symptoms are fairly evident. They may appear a disposition to feel that everything which happens to a man has an intentional relation to himself; life becomes a kind of conspiracy to make him happy or to make him miserable.

The tradition is a hard one to live by, and few succeed, and none altogether. But hard as it is, the rule of life it imposes is not an unworldly counsel of perfection.

The outcome proves that above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame—even life itself

And since demand comes from our appetites, which grow by what they feed upon, whereas supply can be increased only by work and sacrifice, a philosophy which fails to insist upon the limitation of desire must make men forever unhappy

Thus there can never be contentment and peace of mind for modern men because their desires are irrational and, therefore, always expanding and forever unsatisfied