Follies Quotes - page 5
Press on! If Fortune play thee false
To-day, tomorrow she'll be true;
Whom now she sinks she now exalts,
Taking old gifts and granting new,
The wisdom of the present hour
Makes up the follies past and gone;
To weakness, strength succeeds, and power
From frailty springs! Press on, press on!
Park Benjamin, Sr.
Such complicated and apparently unnecessary behavior leads philosophers, both amateur and professional, to ask over and over again, "Why can't human beings live simply and naturally?" Often the complexity of human life makes us look enviously at the relative simplicity of such lives as dogs and cats lead. But the symbolic process, which makes possible the absurdities of human conduct, also makes possible language and therefore all the human achievements dependent upon language. The fact that more things can go wrong with motorcars than with wheelbarrows is no reason for going back to wheelbarrows. Similarly, the fact that the symbolic process makes complicated follies possible is no reason for wanting to return to a cat-and-dog existence. A better solution is to understand the symbolic process so that instead of being its victims we become, to some degree at least, its masters.
S. I. Hayakawa
I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.
Mike Jones
This eminent painter, whose contempt for the follies of mankind kept pace with his acute observation of them, was so disgusted at the blind preference paid to his powers of portraiture that for many years of his residence at Bath he regularly shut up all his landscapes in the back apartments of his house, to which no common visitors were admitted. The landscape that first found its way into any collection was purchased of him by the late Henry Hoare, Esq., of Stourhead, on a friend's recommendation! and so little even then was the merit of Gainsborough duly estimated that Mr. Bampfylde, a dilettante in painting, being on a visit to Stourhead, offered to mend Gainsborough's sheep by repainting them, and was allowed to do so. They have been restored to their original deficiencies by the taste and good sense of the present possessor of that beautiful place [Sir Richard Colt Hoare ].
Thomas Gainsborough
Now the terrible responsibility and blame rests upon the Government, because they were warned in March and April of the danger to General Gordon; because they received every intimation which men could reasonably look for that his danger would be extreme; and because they delayed from March and April right down to the 15th of August before they took a single measure to relieve him. What were they doing all that time? It is very difficult to conceive. ... Some people think there were divisions in the Cabinet, and that, after division on division, a decision was put off lest the Cabinet should be broken up. I am rather inclined to think that it was due to the peculiar position of the Prime Minister [William Gladstone]. He came in as the apostle of the Midlothian campaign, loaded with all the doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, ... all the faults and follies peculiar to it. (From 'Parerga and Paralipomena', Vol. 1, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 'What A Man Represents', pp. 360)
Arthur Schopenhauer
