“Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours-ambition is the serious business of life.”
Walter Scott book Ivanhoe
Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 36, Malvoisin speaking to De Bois-Guilbert.
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”
Walden (1854), p. 60-61
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Henry David Thoreau385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862Related quotes
“We all tend to be greedy end-gainers, paying no attention to our means whereby.”
F. Matthias Alexander (1869–1955) Australian actor
Quoted in The Art of Seeing by Aldous Huxley (1942), p. 88
“In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)
Context: Each of us lives in two realms, the "within" and the "without." The within of our lives is somehow found in the realm of ends, the without in the realm of means. The within of our [lives], the bottom — that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion for which at best we live. The without of our lives is that realm of instrumentalities, techniques, mechanisms by which we live. Now the great temptation of life and the great tragedy of life is that so often we allow the without of our lives to absorb the within of our lives. The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.
Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love
Strength to Love, Chapter 7
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)
Christopher Caldwell (1962) American political writer
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (2009)
“The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end… in the end it is our only ally.”
Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours (1997)
Context: We have faith in the power to change what needs to be changed but we are under no illusion that the transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy will be easy, or that democratic government will mean the end of all our problems. We know that our greatest challenges lie ahead of us and that our struggle to establish a stable, democratic society will continue beyond our own life span.
But we know that we are not alone. The cause of liberty and justice finds sympathetic responses around the world. Thinking and feeling people everywhere, regardless of color or creed, understand the deeply rooted human need for a meaningful existence that goes beyond the mere gratification of material desires. Those fortunate enough to live in societies where they are entitled to full political rights can reach out to help their less fortunate brethren in other areas of our troubled planet.
T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets
Variant: We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
Source: Four Quartets