1902

A genuine first-hand religious experience... Is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.

To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.

The Varieties of Religious Experience · 1902

★ 4.4

Scientific literature

Henri Poincare

Science and Hypothesis · 1902

★ 4.3

Short story · Children's literature

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling

The Elephant's Child · 1902

★ 3.7

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

The Way of All Flesh · 1902

★ 3.6

The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

The Way of All Flesh · 1902

★ 3.6

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

The Way of All Flesh · 1902

★ 3.6

God is Love-I dare say. But what a mischievous devil Love is!

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die... Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

1902

★ 3.6

Short story

Jack London

1902

★ 3.5

Letter

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Rainer Maria Rilke

1902

★ 3.5

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

1902

★ 3.5

Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy-very unhappy-it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.

The Way of All Flesh · 1902

★ 3.5

An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Yes, quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.

1902

★ 3.5

Poem

Thomas Hardy

1902

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

Willa Cather

1902

★ 3.5

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

The Varieties of Religious Experience · 1902

★ 3.5

Speech

William Osler

1902

★ 3.5

Poem

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call a clear call that may not be denied.

John Masefield

1902

★ 3.5

Speech

I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral conditions of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other.... I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible.

Clarence Darrow

1902

★ 3.5

Children's literature

Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there, he was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

Beatrix Potter

The Tale of Peter Rabbit · 1902

★ 2.9

Autobiography and memoir

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Helen Keller

1902

★ 2.0

Political literature

The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

Jane Addams

1902

★ 1.9

To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Samuel Butler · 1902

★ 1.9

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

1902

★ 1.9

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.

The Varieties of Religious Experience · 1902

★ 1.9

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.