Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)
Context: Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him … he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!
“You can't make a man a Christian unless you first make him believe he is a sinner.”
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937), p. 17
Misattributed
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George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950Related quotes
Variant: Do you love the cross because it makes much of you? Or do you love it because it enables you to enjoy and eternity of making much of God?
“I will hate the man you choose because he isn't me, and love him if he makes you smile.”
Source: The Eye of the World
Sun-being to the court
The Other World (1657)
Context: O just ones, hear me! You cannot condemn this man, monkey or parrot for saying that the moon is the world he comes from. If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants, even if he does not come from the moon? Can you force him to have only your visions? Impossible! You may make him say that he believes that the moon is not a world, but still he will not believe it. To believe something, one must imagine that it is more probable than not. Unless you show him what is probable or he realizes it himself, he may tell you that he believes and yet he will not believe.
“If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.”