“Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world…”

As quoted in Quotable Saints (2003) by Ronda Chervin, p. 79

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography (London, 1955), p. 29

Source: All Families are Psychotic

Source: The Life of Pasteur (1902), p. 163
Context: I confess frankly, however, that I am not competent on the question of our philosophical schools. Of M. Comte I have only read a few absurd passages; of M. Littré I only know the beautiful pages you were inspired to write by his rare knowledge and some of his domestic virtues. My philosophy is of the heart and not of the mind, and I give myself up, for instance, to those feelings about eternity which come naturally at the bedside of a cherished child drawing its last breath. At those supreme moments, there is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere combination of phenomena proper to a mechanical equilibrium brought out of the chaos of the elements simply through the gradual action of the forces of matter.

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 3, The Physiology of Thought and Morals, Introduction, p. 111.

Treo Notes (December 2006 - December 2009)

As quoted in Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies by Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) p. 64.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe p. 234