Caleb E. > Caleb's Quotes

“But, then, you were born a pagan; I am trying laboriously to make myself one. I can take nothing for granted, I can enjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women - I have to invent an excuse, a justification for everything that's delightful. Otherwise I can't enjoy it with an easy conscience.”
― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

“No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless,”
― William James, The Collected Works of William James

“By dying for a conviction a man proves only that he is sincere, not that he is right.”
― Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom

“So modern pothecaries taught the art
By doctors bills to play the doctor's part.
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we supposed. And we ourselves are, too.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“In his last years Linacre gave up medicine for the Church and then for the first time read the gospels. On so doing he exclaimed, 'Either this is not the gospel or we are not Christians.”
― Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom

“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Doubt, I’ve learned, is wisdom. And the older I get, the less I know for certain. Those leaders who never think they are wrong, who never question their judgments or perspectives, are a danger to the organizations and people they lead. In some cases, they are a danger to the nation and the world.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
― Voltaire, Candide