“The lesson of modern history—that Religions enjoy (are endowed with) the prerogative of perpetual youth while philosophies seldom outlast a generation.”

Introduction <br class="br">1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836)

In his Nobel Prize Banquet Speech http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1952/bloch-speech.html, December 10, 1952.

Part 4, Section 7
Source: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Aids to Reflection (1873), Aphorism 1

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Preface
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)
Context: Logically speaking, even the life of an actor has no preface. He begins, and that is all. And such beginning is usually obscure; but faintly remembered at the best. Art is a completion; not merely a history of endeavour. It is only when completeness has been obtained that the beginnings of endeavour gain importance, and that the steps by which it has been won assume any shape of permanent interest. After all, the struggle for supremacy is so universal that the matters of hope and difficulty of one person are hardly of general interest. When the individual has won out from the huddle of strife, the means and steps of his succeeding become of interest, either historically or in the educational aspect — but not before. From every life there may be a lesson to some one; but in the teeming millions of humanity such lessons can but seldom have any general or exhaustive force. The mere din of strife is too incessant for any individual sound to carry far. Fame, who rides in higher atmosphere, can alone make her purpose heard. Well did the framers of picturesque idea understand their work when in her hand they put a symbolic trumpet.

Ch. 22 http://www.resologist.net/talent22.htm; sometimes paraphrased &quot;I can conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is anything more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.&quot; <br class="br">Wild Talents (1932)

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 19 (p. 334)