Faculty Quotes - Page 9

• The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution.

  Aldo Leopold

  Names, Grace, Development

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.174, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an antechamber, or heighten the splendours of a holiday.

  John Ruskin

  Holiday, Mean, Men

  John Ruskin (1873). “Pt. 6-9 of leaf beauty. of cloud beauty. of ideas of relation”, p.233

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• But just as it sometimes happens that the most temperate people, who have never acquired the habit of drinking alcohol, or even a taste for it, are tormented by the fear that somehow or other they will one day find themselves drunk, so Isabelle perpetually feared that she might be betrayed into an impulsive act that was destructive to such order as reason had imposed on life. Therefore she was forever running her faculty of analysis over in her mind with the preposterous zeal of an adolescent running a razor over his beardless chin.

  Rebecca West

  Running, Drinking, Order

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• wheresoever the earth may be placed, or whithersoever it may be carried by its animal faculty, heavy bodies will always be carried towards it.

  Johannes Kepler

  Animal, Body, Earth

  "Kepler" by Walter William Bryant, (p. 36), 1920.

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• Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

  Christopher Marlowe

  Sweet, Moving, Four Elements

  'Tamburlaine the Great' (1590) pt. 1, act 2, sc. 7

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• Thus the brave and aspiring life of one man lights a flame in the minds of others of like faculties and impulse; and where there is equally vigorous effort, like distinction and success will almost surely follow. Thus the chain of example is carried down through time in an endless succession of links--admiration exciting imitation, and perpetuating the true aristocracy of genius.

  Samuel Smiles

  Men, Light, Flames

  Samuel Smiles (2009). “Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.528, The Floating Press

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• Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Strong, Real, Struggle

  Charlotte Brontë “Jane Eyre”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If Justice is pictured blindfold, it is because she judges causes, not men, and not because the prime faculty of an arbitrator is lack of discernment.

  Charles Wagner

  Men, Justice, Judging

  Charles Wagner (1905). “Justice”, W. Briggs

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• Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience - a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.

  Lord Acton

  Christian, Philosophy, Reflection

  "The History of Freedom in Christianity". Lord Acton's Address Delivered to the Members of the Bridgnorth Institute, acton.org. May 28, 1877.

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• The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced - that without intelligence we should be brutes - but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.

  George Henry Lewes

  Character, Eye, Sacrifice

  "Rose, Blanche, and Violet". Book by George Henry Lewes, Volume 1, p. 8-9, 1848.

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• I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul.

  Nicolas Malebranche

  Pain, Passion, Thinking

  "Dialogues on Metaphysics". Book by Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogue III, 1688.

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• Reason we call that faculty innate in us of discovering laws and applying them with thought.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Law, Reason, Discovering

  Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.97, University of Chicago Press

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• In some ways painters have been more important in my life than writers. Painters teach you how to see—a faculty that usually isn’t highly developed in poets. Whether you take a walk in the woods with a painter, or go to a museum with one, through them you notice shapes, colors, harmonies, relationships that enhance your own seeing.

  Carolyn Kizer

  Museums, Color, Important

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• Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Beautiful, Mean, Add

  St Thomas Aquinas (2013). “Summa Theologica, Volume 2 (Part II, First Section)”, p.707, Cosimo, Inc.

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• To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world , and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason , this and nothing else is philosophy.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophy, World, Reason

  "The World as Will and Representation". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer, Vol. I, §68, 1819.

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• It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Sight, Discovery

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.74, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Self, Imagination, Heaven

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.

  Cesare Pavese

  Sight, Two, Naked

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.178, Transaction Publishers

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• The soul is presupposed as a ready-made agent, which displays such features as its acts and utterances, from which we can learn what it is, what sort of faculties and powers it possesses -- all without being aware that the act and utterance of what the soul is really invests it with that character in our conception and makes it reach a higher stage of being than it explicitly had before.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Character, Soul, Utterance

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1971). “Hegel's Philosophy of Mind”, p.265, Library of Alexandria

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• Life is hard and astonishingly complicated.... No one great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work -- or want to work -- will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Make Others Happy, Life Is Hard, Want

  Sinclair Lewis (2012). “The Job: An American Novel”, p.266, The Floating Press

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• The apprehensive faculty must be scrutinised in action.

  James Joyce

  Action

  James Joyce (1963). “Stephen Hero”, p.212, New Directions Publishing

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• To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise and no faculty grows save as it is exercised.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Exercise, Thinking, Achievement

  "The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard". Book by Elbert Hubbard, p. 64, 1927.

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• Every art and every faculty contemplates certain things as its principal objects.

  Epictetus

  Art, Certain, Contemplating

  Epictetus (1944). “Epictetus: Discourses and Enchiridion”

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• Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions, as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.

  Epictetus

  Running, Action, Habit

  Epictetus (1807). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, Preserved by Arrian ; The Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.250

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• Kant ... was also quite aware that "the urgent need" of reason is both different from and "more than mere quest and desire for knowledge." Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Two, Knowing

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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