No More Learning

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Childhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping, of hearing what
one ought not to hear.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

The only things worth saying are those that we forget, just as the only
things worth doing are those that the world is surprised at.

Maturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say. That is
the art of conversation.

Virtue is generally merely a form of deficiency, just as vice is an
assertion of intellect.

People teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in
order to conceal their tears.

To be unnatural is often to be great. To be natural is generally to be
stupid.

To lie finely is an art, to tell the truth is to act according to
nature.

People who talk sense are like people who break stones in the road: they
cover one with dust and splinters.

Jesus said to man: You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be
yourself.
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or
possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only
you could realise that you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches
can be stolen from a man, real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of
your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken
from you. Try to so shape your life that external things will not harm
you, and try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid
preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property
hinders individualism at every step.

When Jesus talks about the poor He simply means personalities, just as
when He talks about the rich He simply means people who have not
developed their personalities.

An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats.


* * * * *


THE SOUL OF MAN


The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of
Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from
that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present
condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact,
scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like
Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M, Renan;
a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to
keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand
'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the
perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the
incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are
exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and
exaggerated altruism--are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find
themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by
hideous starvation.