Frasi di Will Durant

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“L'amore che sentiamo in gioventù è superficiale se confrontato all'amore che ha un vecchio uomo per la sua vecchia moglie.”

“In filosofia, come in politica, la distanza più lunga tra due punti è una linea retta.”

“Una volta ancora, nella grande sistole e diastole della storia, un'epoca di libertà è finita e un'epoca di disciplina è cominciata.”

“Ora so quanto sia fuori moda riconoscere nella vita o nella storia un genio più alto di noi stessi.”

“La tolleranza cresce solo quando la fede perde certezza; la certezza è omicida.”

“Coloro che hanno sofferto molto diventano molto pungenti o molto gentili.”

“Dimentica gli errori. Dimentica il fallimento. Dimentica tutto tranne quello che stai per fare adesso e fallo. Oggi è il tuo giorno fortunato”

“Here and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. All life living at the expense of life, every organism eating other organisms forever.”

“A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.”

“As we find a place in the economic world the rebellion of youth subsides; we disapprove of earthquakes when our feet are on the earth. We forget then the radicalism then in a gentle liberalism — which is radicalism softened with the consciousness of a bank account.”

“Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.”

“It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.”

“Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.”

“Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.”

“Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.”

“Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.”

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

“The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.”

“Youth is learning to read (which is all that one learns in school), and is learning where and how to find what he may later need to know (which is the best of the arts that he acquires in college). Nothing learned from a book is worth anything until it is used and verified in life; only then does it begin to affect behavior and desire. It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.”

“Man is as young as the risks he takes.”

“See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth.”

“Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.”

“To all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?”

“I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. … Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again. For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth.”

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.”

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

“Both Stoicism and Epicureanism — the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure — were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France.”

“In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia, “to look on all things with a mind at peace"."”

“Great organizers, as much as inevitable slaves, tend to stoic moods: it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive.”

“Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.”

“Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.”