Hugh Kingsmill: Quotes about life

Hugh Kingsmill was British writer and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Hugh Kingsmill: 30 quotes 0 likes

“The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.”

Hugh Kingsmill

Matthew Arnold (1928) p. 89

Life , World , Fear , Soul

“Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action.”

Hugh Kingsmill

"The Genealogy of Hitler", section 1, The Poisoned Crown (1944)

Life , World , Spring , Nature

“Every false philosophy is an imagination of a world propitious to irrational demands and unregulated desires. The false philosopher's dream infects someone in closer touch than himself with everyday experience, this agent of his desire seeks to translate the dream into reality, and disaster follows. It is the Cinderella story in actual life. Rousseau was Robespierre's fairy godmother, Karl Marx was Lenin's, Nietzsche was Hitler's.”

Hugh Kingsmill

"Oscar Wilde's Fairy Godmother", The Best of Hugh Kingsmill (1973) p. 278 (1948)

Life , World , Dreams , Imagination