Letter to Lord Linlithgow (23 September 1937), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 870
The 1930s
“We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life.”
Source: Marius the Epicurean http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/8mrs110.txt (1885), Ch. 25
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Walter Pater 11
essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer 1839–1894Related quotes
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 152
“One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life.”
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 1 "Before The Beginning"
Context: One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life. As one journeys along he gains experiences and even some ideas. Accumulated opinions and philosophy may be more important to others than the bare facts about how he lived, so my ambition is not so much to relate the occurrences as to record the ideas that life has forced me to accept; and, after all, thoughts, impressions and feelings are really life itself. I should like to think that these reflections might make existence a trifle easier for some of those who may chance to read this story.
Variant: Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Lecture II, section 32.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)
Michael A. Jackson, cited in: Matti Tedre. The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline, 2014, p. 135.
To.——, The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 455.