Joseph Wood Krutch Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve; but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Science, Technology, Men

  1949 The Twelve Seasons,'February'.

  20 Copy quote

• February... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it is wasteful folly to wish that time would pass, or - as the puritanical old saying used to have it - to kill time until it kills you.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Wish, February, Used

  7 Copy quote

• The advertiser is the overrewarded court jester and court pander at the democratic court.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Advertising, Court, Democratic

  57 Copy quote

• Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Men, Long, Enough

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1980). “A Krutch omnibus: forty years of social and literary criticism”, William Morrow &Company

  4 Copy quote

• Though we face the facts of sex we are more reluctant than ever to face the fact of death or the crueler facts of life, either biological or social.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Sex, Faces, Facts

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1964). “If You Don't Mind My Saying So ...: Essays on Man and Nature”

  4 Copy quote

• The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Important, Desire, Emotion

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

  4 Copy quote

• Love is ...not a fact in nature of which we become aware, but rather a creation of the human imagination.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Love, Imagination, Facts

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

  4 Copy quote

• Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Loyalty, Good Life, Passion

  8 Copy quote

• In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Thoughtful, Men, Confusion

  4 Copy quote

• What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  War, Men, Want

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1970). “A Krutch Omnibus: Forty Years of Social and Literary Criticism”

  5 Copy quote

• How anyone can profess to find animal life interesting and yet take delight in reducing the wonder of any animal to a bloody mass of fur or feathers?

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Life, Compassion, Animal

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1967). “And even if you do: essays on man, manners & machines”

  4 Copy quote

• Nature, in her blind thirst for life has filled every possible cranny of the rotting earth with some sort of fantastic creature.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Nature, Rotting, Earth

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1980). “A Krutch omnibus: forty years of social and literary criticism”, William Morrow &Company

  4 Copy quote

• To be reminded that one is very much like other members of the animal kingdom is often funny...though...I do not too much mind being somewhat like a cat.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Cat, Animal, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Law, Fundamentals, Human Nature

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1964). “If You Don't Mind My Saying So ...: Essays on Man and Nature”

  4 Copy quote

• Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Games, Trying, Losing

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1964). “If You Don't Mind My Saying So ...: Essays on Man and Nature”

  11 Copy quote

• The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Change, England, Serious

  The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar for the Country "February: The OneWe Could DoWithout" (1949)

  8 Copy quote

• Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Beauty, Beautiful, Flower

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1967). “And even if you do: essays on man, manners & machines”

  4 Copy quote

• We have not merely escaped from something but into something... We have joined the greatest of all communities, which is not that of man alone but of everything which shares with us the great adventure of being alive.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Nature, Adventure, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Philosophical, Civilization, Play

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

  10 Copy quote

• Those whose conscience demands that they defy authority in some ways that involve great consequences must be willing to accept some penalty.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Demand, Way, Authority

  14 Copy quote

• An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Nature, Men, Scarcity

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1977). “The desert year”, Penguin Books, 1977

  8 Copy quote

• Being the inventor of sex would seem to be a sufficient distinction for a creature just barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Sex, Eye, Science

  Joseph Wood Krutch, Paul Landacre (2005). “The Great Chain of Life”, p.28, University of Iowa Press

  7 Copy quote

• In our hearts those of us who know anything worth knowing know that in March a new year begins, and if we plan any new leaves, it will be when the rest of Nature is planning them too.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  New Year, Heart, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Art, Real, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• Science has always promised two things not necessarily related; an increase first in our powers, second in our happiness or wisdom, and we have come to realize that it is the first and less important of the two promises which it has kept most abundantly.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Wisdom, Two, Intelligence

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1956). “The Modern Temper”

  4 Copy quote

Page 3 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin