“For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.”
The Doll (1887–1889)
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Bolesław Prus 10
leading figure in the history of Polish literature 1847–1912Related quotes
Letter 16, 1887, also in Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce (1989) http://egwdatabase.whiteestate.org/nxt/gateway.dll/egw-comp/section00000.htm/book05997.htm/chapter06009.htm, p. 242
“The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature.”
What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
Intentions (1891)
“We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building”
Section 47
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or "of those that are to be." We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.
Theodore Dalrymple is outraged to be asked his ethnicity by officialdom - but remembers that it is our social duty to grin and bear insults http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001697.php (January 23, 2008).
The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)
The Revolutionary Path, by Frank Buchman, publisher: Grosvenor Books, 1975, p.23
Quotes on the war of ideas
"An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue", p. 37
The Fable of the Bees (1714)
“For we see that man is a civil and political animal, and is naturally inclined to civilization.”
De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance) (1434)
The Question of German Guilt (1947)
Context: We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either. How shall we talk with people who will not go where others probe and think, where men seek independence in insight and conviction?