Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter VI, Consolation For Difficulties, p. 228.
Context: To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant.
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
“To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.”
"On Being Embarrassed" (p. 140)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)
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John Leonard 42
American critic, writer, and commentator 1939–2008Related quotes
“Human consciousness was inherent and latent from the beginning of your physical universe.”
Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 159, quoting from Seth Session 26
Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 74 http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter74.html
“To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.”
Die Menge nicht zu achten, ist sittlich; sie zu ehren, ist rechtlich.
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments” § 211
1930s, Quarantine Speech (1937)
"The Peacefulness of Being at War." in The New Republic (11 September 1915), p. 152 http://fair-use.org/the-new-republic/1915/09/11/the-peacefulness-of-being-at-war.
Context: Better that the nation grow poor for a cause we can honor, than grow rich for an end that is unknown. Who can regard without deep misgiving the process of accumulating wealth unaccompanied by a corresponding growth of knowledge as to the uses to which wealth must be applied? This is what we see in normal times, and the spectacle is profoundly disturbing. Far less disturbing at all events is that process of spending the wealth which we have now to witness.
“By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid Art,
Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.”
Annus Mirabilis (1667), stanza 155.
Zwingli Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, Volume 1, p. 427-428.
“To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.”
Letter VIII: Things Written, section 33
Time and Tide (1867)