Portraits From Memory and Other Essays Quotes

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays

“Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays

“In our age, mankind collectively has given itself over to a degree of hubris surpassing everything known in former ages.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays

“The pursuit of social success, in the form of prestige or power or both, is the most important obstacle to happiness in a competitive society.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays

“The pursuit of social success, in the form of prestige or power or both, is the most important obstacle in a competitive society.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays

“In the outworks of our lives, we were almost strangers, but we shared a certain outlook on human life and human destiny, which, from the very first, made a bond of extreme strength . . . . At our very first meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink through layer after layer of what was superficial, till gradually both reached the central fire. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We looked into each other's eyes, half appalled and half intoxicated to find ourselves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate love, and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly able to find my way among ordinary affairs.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays