The Five Great Philosophies of Life Quotes

“Democracy is a most accommodating and charming form of government, full of variety and diversity,”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, daring, which can love us and which we can love.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. "In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. "Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me unafraid. "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“Epicurus is right, that happiness is up at auction all the time, and sold in lots to suit the purchaser whenever he bids high enough. And the price is not exorbitant: prudence to plan for the simple pleasures that can be had for the asking; resolution to cut off the pleasures that come too high; determination to amputate our reflections the instant they develop morbid symptoms, and to take an anti-toxine against fret and worry, the moment we feel the approach of their contagious atmosphere; concentration, to live in a self-chosen present from which profitless regret and unprofitable anxieties, projected from the past or borrowed from the future, are absolutely banished.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“Come fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of repentance fling: The bird of Time has but a little way To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing. "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow. "Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and future Fears: To-morrow!—Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years. "I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell: "Heav'n but the vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on Fire, Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“The end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear; and when once we have attained this, all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing that the living creature has not to go to find something that is wanting, or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“He who is least in need of the morrow will meet the morrow most pleasantly.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“Christianity of this simple, vital sort is the world's salvation. Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the minds of the aged, and forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled with all manner of exploded superstition, false philosophy, science that is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites; discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around it, and holds the keys of eternal life.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“Love has no desire to deceive, and hence no fear of being disbelieved.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life

“We ought to look round for people to eat and drink with, before we look for something to eat and drink: to feed without a friend is the life of a lion and a wolf.”
― William De Witt Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life