HEROES
“They were men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities, – clouds, froth and all inanity gave way under them; there was no footing for them but on firm Earth;’ no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not footing there.”
CREEDS
The more evident the truth, the more difficult to understand its efficacy at a particular conjuncture. A syllogism or a “Self-evident truth” is not a thing walking about on two legs, which suddenly catches hold of people and converts them. The truth was always there, and the secret must lie in the variable, not in the factor.
THEOLOGIES
The great theological controversies are the conflict; of rival solutions of one great problem: how to reconcile philosophy to superstition.
Theology = Reason put in chains, forced to grind the philosophical mill and bring out the orthodox dogma.
SIR JORN LUBBOCK
It is not too much to say that the horrible dread of the known evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure.
Cf. Jos. Addison’s Essay on Pleasure. Memento Mori – which explains the reasons for it?
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“The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows chiefly from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades.”
– Darwin
Vinasyatsvavinasyantam yah pasyati sah pasyati
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All the definitions of health or disease given so far have been imperfect and incomplete.
Health = that state of body and mind where God is visible far and near. (Short-sightedness in and out and long-sightedness both cured). The health-degree of all other conditions is to be measured by this standard.
Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously put round a substance bad.
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Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much.
Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on! The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness box; in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is scouted as a counterfeit.
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My system is not for promulgation first of all, it is for serving myself to live by.
“The man’s (Cromwell’s) misery, a man’s misery always does came of his greatness.”
All his (Cromwell’s) great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his officers and he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some door of hope, as they would name it, disclosed itself. A superior man must have reticence in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man’s taking up his abode in a house built of glass.
The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his department, silently thinking, silently working, whom no morning newspaper makes mention of I They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is like a forest which has no roots, which has all turned into leaves and boughs.
“Seekest thou great things, seek them not.” The Sun may be dimmed many a time, but the Sun does not let itself grow a Dimness. So a Hero.
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Scepticism writing on Belief is equivalent to Blindness laying down the Laws of Optics.
Self-deception, once yielded to all other deceptions, follows naturally more and more.
What a paltry patchwork of theatrical paper – mantles, tinsel and mummery had this man (Napoleon) wrapped his own great Reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby. The man was given up to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie, a fearful but most sure calamity.
Kim tena nakritam paapam chaurenaataapahaarinaa
Yonyathaa santamaatmaanamanyathaa pratipadyate
(Sanatsujata, Mahabharata)
“What sin is not committed by that thief who steals away his own self by regarding his self as one thing while it is a different thing.”