I.B. George Quotes
The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.
No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion.
Fame and admiration weigh not a feather in the scale against friendship and love, for the heart languishes all the same.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread.
The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
In any close society it is more urgent to restrain others than to be free oneself. Hence the tendency for the central authority to absorb and supersede such as are local or delegated.
Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.
Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies.
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.
Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.
Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.
In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed.
The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive.
Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.
The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things.
People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.
Spirituality lies in regarding existence merely as a vehicle for contemplation, and contemplation merely a vehicle for joy.
The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
