The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on.
Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.
The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.
You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.
The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.
And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.
The constitution expects every man to do his duty; and when he fails the law urges him; or should he do too much; the same master rebukes him.
The death of my mother permanently affects my happiness, more even than I should have anticipated, though I always knew that I must feel the separation at first as a severe wrench. But I did not apprehend, during her life, to what a degree she prevented me from feeling heart-solitude.
I think if I have any kind of unique gift, it's more in the comedy area than it is in the dramatic area.
The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.