The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method
Context: If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.
“Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.”
Part 1
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)
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George Eliot 300
English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880Related quotes
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 95.
Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 31.
common statement in 'The New York Times', 8 July 1945
1940's
Source: "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), p. 66
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Art
Variant: Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Source: Emerson's Essays
Context: Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.