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. . . PESSIMISM see: "CYNICS" see: "MELANCHOLY" see: "MISANTHROPY" see: "NEGATIVITY" see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links see: "UNHAPPINESS" for other related links He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol ..." [3 April 1777]. My life Is like a bowling ball Heavy And black And full of holes And headed for The gutter --William Burrill "Life is a Bowling Ball, Believe it or Not" [19 May 1994] The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears that this is true. --James Branch Cabell (18791958) American novelist and essayist. _The Silver Stallion_ [1926] What is man? A foolish baby, Vainly strives, and fights, and frets. Demanding all, deserving nothing, One small grave is what he gets. --Thomas Carlyle (17951881) Scottish historian and political philosopher. "Cui Bono", st. 3 The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark", and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet". The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. --G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (18741936) English essayist, novelist, and poet. Preface to _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ [1904]. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. --Often misattributed to Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940-45, 1951-55]. - They're out of sorts in Sunderland And terribly cross in Kent, They're dull in Hull And the Isle of Mull Is seething with discontent, They're nervous in Northumberland And Devon is down the drain, They're filled with wrath On the firth of Forth And sullen on Salisbury Plain, In Dublin they're depressed, lads, Maybe because they're Celts For Drake is going West, lads, And so is everyone else. Hurray-hurray-hurray! Misery's here to stay. There are bad times just around the corner, There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky And it's no good whining About a silver lining For we know from experience that they won't roll by, With a scowl and a frown We'll keep our peckers down And prepare for depression and doom and dread, We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag And wait until we drop down dead. From Portland Bill to Scarborough They're querulous and subdued And Shropshire lads Have behaved like cads From Berwick-on-Tweed to Bude, They're mad at Market Harborough And livid at Leigh-on-Sea, In Tunbridge Wells You can hear the yells Of woe-begone bourgeoisie. We all get bitched about, lads, Whoever our vote elects, We know we're up the spout, lads. And that's what England expects. Hurray-hurray-hurray! Trouble is on the way. There are bad times just around the corner, The horizon's gloomy as can be, There are black birds over The grayish cliffs of Dover And the rats are preparing to leave the B.B.C. We're an unhappy breed And very bored indeed When reminded of something that Nelson said. While the press and the politicians nag nag nag We'll wait until we drop down dead. From Colwyn Bay to Kettering They're sobbing themselves to sleep, The shrieks and wails In the Yorkshire dales Have even depressed the sheep. In rather vulgar lettering A very disgruntled group Have posted bills On the Cotswold Hills To prove that we're in the soup. While begging Kipling's pardon There's one thing we know for sure If England is a garden We ought to have more manure. Hurray-hurray-hurray! Suffering and dismay. There are bad times just around the corner And the outlook's absolutely vile, There are Home Fires smoking From Windermere to Woking And we're not going to tighten our belts and smile, smile, smile, At the sound of a shot We'd just as soon as not Take a hot water bottle and go to bed, We're going to untense our muscles till they sag sag sag And wait until we drop down dead. There are bad times just around the corner, We can all look forward to despair, It's as clear as crystal From Bridlington to Bristol That we can't save democracy and we don't much care If the Reds and the Pinks Believe that England stinks And that world revolution is bound to spread, We'd better all learn the lyrics of the old 'Red Flag' And wait until we drop down dead. A likely story Land of Hope and Glory, Wait until we drop down dead. --Noλl Coward (18991973) English playwright, actor, and composer. "There are Bad Times Just Around the Corner" [1953 song] - How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy. --Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (18301916) Austrian writer. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 251 [1886]. Men who are out of humor with themselves often see their own condition in the world outside them, and everything seems amiss because it is not well with themselves. --James A. Froude (18181894) English historian. _Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years, 17951835_ [1882] I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. --Janeane Garofalo (b. 1964) American actress and political activist. Quoted in Michael Cader _That's Funny!_ [1996]. Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own. --W. S. Gilbert (18361911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _The Mikado_, act 1 [1885] One day I sat thinking, almost in despair; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said reassuringly: cheer up, things could get worse. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse. --James Hagerty (19091981) Press Secretary to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In Robert Andrews _The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 5 [1887]. Pessimism (or rather what is called such) is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play. --Thomas Hardy (18401928) English novelist and poet. _Notebook_ [1 January 1902] There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it. --William Hazlitt (17781830) English essayist. _The Round Table_ [1817] Don't ever become a pessimist ... A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun and neither can stop the march of events. --Robert A(nson) Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _Time Enough for Love_ [1973] She dressed in social matron wear and wore her pessimism like a strand of accent pearls. --Tami Hoag [nιe Mikkelson] (b. 1959) American novelist. _Night Sins_ [1995] I've pretty much made up my mind that the South have achieved their independence & I am almost ready to hope spring will see an end ... Believe me, we never shall lick 'em ... I think before long the majority will say that we are vainly working to effect what never happens the subjugation (for that is it) of a great civilized nation. We shan't do it at least the Army can't. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. Quoted in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_ [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: The 21-year-old Holmes had almost been killed at the Battle of Antietam on 15 Sept., and his letter reflects the sense of despondency that had overcome the North at this stage of the war. There are indeed (who might say Nay) gloomy & hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of diseased bodies, disgusted with the present, & despairing of the future; always counting that the worst will happen, because it may happen. To these I say, How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened! --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. Letter to John Adams [8 April 1816]. Cheer up, the worst is yet to come. --Philander Chase Johnson (18661939) American journalist, humorist, and dramatic editor, "Shooting Stars" in _Everybody's Magazine_ [May 1920]. The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. 1 Sept. 1759 issue of _The Idler_ (essays in the newspaper "The Universal Chronicle"). No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. --Helen Keller (18801968) American author and educator who was blind and deaf. _My Key of Life, Optimism: An Essay_ [1904] Nothing to do but work, Nothing to eat but food, Nothing to wear but clothes To keep one from going nude. --Benjamin Franklin King (18571894) American poet, "The Pessimist" Mistrust the man who finds everything good; the man who finds everything evil; and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. --Johann Kaspar Lavater (17411801) Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics. Quoted in _The New Era_, vol II, no. 7 [May 1872]. If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train. --Robert Lowell (19171977) American poet. "Since 1939" [1977] No good deed goes unpunished. --attributed to Clare Boothe Luce (19031987) American playwright and politician. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. --John Milton (16081674) English poet. "Paradise Lost" [1667] [Asked about his expectation of winning metals during the 2006 Winter Olympics:] "We have none." --Fabio Morandini Italian Nordic combined coach. Quoted in _The Wall Street Journal_ [25 February 2006]. - The dark age is likely to intervene anyway. It is very unusual for one moral order to slide into another with no intervening chaos. There are many other symptoms. The excessive interest in eroticism is characteristic of the end of a civilization, because it really means a growing impotence, and a fear of impotence. Then the obsessive need for excitement, vicarious excitement, which of course the games provided for the Romans, and which television provides for our population. Even the enormously complicated structure of taxation and administration is, funnily enough, a symptom of the end of a civilization; these things become so elaborate that in the end they become insupportable because of their very elaboration. Above all, there is this truly terrible thing which afflicts materialist societies boredom; an obsessive boredom, which I note on every hand. Mine is, admittedly, a minority view; a lot of people think that we are just on the verge of a new marvelous way of life. I see no signs of it at all myself. I notice that where our way of life is most successful materially it is most disastrous morally and spiritually; that the psychiatric wards are the largest and most crowded, and the suicides most numerous, precisely where material prosperity is greatest, where most money is spent on education. --Malcolm Muggeridge (19031990) British writer, broadcaster, and journalist. _Jesus Rediscovered_, p. 213 [1969] For as we abolish the ills and pains of the flesh we multiply those of the mind, so by the time mankind are finally delivered from disease and decay all pasteurised, their genes counted and re-arranged, filled with new replaceable plastic organs, able to eat, fornicate, and perform other physical functions innocuously and hygenically as and when desired they will all be mad, and the world one huge psychiatric ward. --Malcolm Muggeridge (19031990) British writer, broadcaster, and journalist. Quoted in Ian Hunter _Things Past_ [1978]. - We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever. --Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca] (13041374) Italian scholar, poet, and Humanist. Letter to Philippe de Cabassoles [c. 1360]. His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools: the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.' --Terry Pratchett (b. 1948) English science fiction writer. _Small Gods_ [1992] My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists. --attributed to Jean Rostand (18941977) French biologist and philosopher. The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. Interview in _Playboy_ [March 1963]. 'Do you know what a pessimist is?' 'A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.' --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish dramatist and critic. _An Unsocial Socialist_ [1887] You may leave here for four days in space, But when you return, it's the same old place. --P.F. Sloan [Philip Gary Schlein] (b. 1945) American pop/rock singer and songwriter. _Eve of Destruction_ [1965 song], sung by Barry McGuire. A pessimist looks at his glass and says it is half empty; an optimist looks at it and says it is half full. --Josiah Stamp (18801941) English economist. Attributed in "N.Y. Times" [13 November 1935]. - There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Mark Twain's Notebook_, entry of 27 December 1903 [1935] Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. --attributed to Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. - A farmer was asked what sort of year he had just had. 'Medium,' came the reply. 'What do you mean by medium?' 'Worse than last year but better than next.' --Peter Walker (b. 1923) Speech before Royal Horticultural Society [21 May 1979]. The pessimist complains about the wind; The optimist expects it to change; The realist adjusts the sails. --attributed to William Arthur Ward (19211994) American college administrator and author. [On his outlook for humanity:] There is no way out or round or through the impasse. It is the end. --H.G. Wells (18661946) English novelist. _Mind At The End Of Its Tether_ [1945] Twixt the optimist and pessimist The difference is droll: The optimist sees the donut But the pessimist sees the hole. --McLandburgh Wilson (1892?) "Optimist and Pessimist" [1915] - The defeat of Nazism has removed one of the obstacles to the democratization of Germany; but it has not created a democratic Germany, wrote Dulles. Nor is there much basis for the belief that democracy will develop in Germany under present conditions of defeat, hunger, idleness and despair. --a report from the April 1947 issue of the magazine "Foreign Affairs", in which future CIA chief Allen W. Dulles complained that prospects for democratic reforms in postwar Germany looked bleak. - My granddad, viewing earth's worn cogs, Said things were going to the dogs; His granddad in his house of logs, Said things were going to the dogs; His granddad in the Flemish bogs Said things were going to the dogs; His granddad in his old skin togs, Said things were going to the dogs; There's one thing that I have to state The dogs have had a good long wait. --anon. I saw this book, "The Power of Positive Thinking," and I almost bought it. But then I thought, 'What the hell good would that do?' --anon. In this year [1260] almost in the whole of Italy there was a miracle. For in Perugia men began to go through the city naked, beating themselves hard with rods and clamouring 'Sacred Maria, receive the sinners' ... and this clamor reverberated (from city to city). --anon. _Annals of Genoa_ [1260] in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 199 [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: The grim movement of the Flagellants arose spontaneously in Italian towns when bands of half-naked men marched from city to city flagellating themselves in expectation of the Last Judgement. Similar outbreaks occurred at intervals in western Europe. Nothing to do but work! Nothing! Alas, alack! Nowhere to go but out! Nowhere to come but back! --The Pessimist (trad.)  . . see: "MEANNESS" see: "NARROW-MINDEDNESS" see: "TRIFLES" The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (17421799) German scientist and drama critic. _Aphorisms_ [1765-99] There is something awfully small about someone who cannot admit that anyone else is exceptionally large. --George F. Will (b. 1941) American columnist. _The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions_ [1982] ;void(0)) PHILADELPHIA . . see: "PLACES" for related links [Suggested epitaph for himself:] Here lies W.C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. Quoted in "Vanity Fair" [June 1925]. [On the mindset of the Philly sports fan:] There is something about the Philadelphia fan, though, that does revel in the local reputation for harshness. Booing can be dark comedy, an art form. That was the case in 1999 when the Phillies sent Matthew Scott to the mound for the ceremonial opening pitch of the baseball season. Scott had undergone the first successful hand transplant ever performed in the United States. He bounced the ball up to the plate. He was booed. --Dallas Green [George Dallas Green] (b. 1934) American professional baseball player and manager. The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe. --Frank Rizzo (19201991) Ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia. Attributed in Richard Lederer _ The Bride of Anguished English_, p. 36 [2002]. - The highlight of my baseball career came in Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium when I saw a fan fall out of the upper deck. When he got up and walked away, the crowd booed. --Bob Uecker (b. 1935) American Major League baseball player, broadcaster, and actor. In "Quotes That Say It All About '92," _San Francisco Chronicle_ [30 December 1992]. They have Easter egg hunts in Philadelphia, and if the kids don't find the eggs, they get booed. --Bob Uecker (b. 1935) American Major League baseball player, broadcaster, and actor. Quoted in Jon Winokur _The Traveling Curmudgeon_ [2003]. - Three Philadelphia lawyers are a match for the devil. --popular saying, early 19th century ;void(0)) PHILANTHROPY . . see: "MONEY" for related links see: "KINDNESS" for related links Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness, when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CCCXLI [1821 ed.] - [John D. Rockefeller] was only thirty-three when he owned ninety percent of all American refineries and all the main pipelines and oil cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Within a few years he was the first billionaire in history. He lived most of his life more simply than most stock-brokers, like a frugal Scandinavian monarch. By his bedside in his New York house he had always on hand his Bible, though it lay on top of his bedside safe. At sixty, penitence set in. He was very much a Victorian in his capacity to rationalize his energy as the engine of God. And, as happened with many more of the money barons, the coming on of arthritis convinced him that he had made all his money for the public good. So, with complete sincerity, he disbursed it. Through a foundation created in his own name, he gave $530,000,000 for worldwide medical research. I must say that he is the only philanthropist I can think of who gave away his fortune with no strings binding its use. He was photographed everywhere doing folksy things attending a county fair, teetering on the putting green, marrying off a couple of midgets for charity to prove that even Rockefeller was as mortal as the rest of us and that, though he was a kind of monarch, he had the common touch. As he moved into his nineties people began to doubt his mortality, but the news that he was restricted to a gruel and Graham cracker diet brought some consolation to the poor and healthy. When he died, at the age of ninety-eight, it was as if an emperor had gone. ... There were not many men like Rockefeller, but it didn't take many to constitute a cabal of real national, continental power that overshadowed the elected power of the Presidents of the United States. There was Henry Clay Frick, who turned coke and iron ore into gold, and E. H. Harriman, who collected railroads the way other men collect stamps. There were Harriman's rival, James J. Hill, and his ally, J. P. Morgan, whose specialty was money itself. And there was Frick's sometime friend and sometime enemy, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had three specialties: steel, making money, and giving it away. The son of a poor weaver, he was born in a stone cottage in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835, at a time of such depression that in the revolutionary year of 1848 the family took off for America and for a squalid house in a grimy town called Pittsburgh. The father went back to weaving and the mother went back to stitching shoe leather; it was not much of a New World for them. But their twelve- year-old boy was as shiny as an apple and as lively as a squirrel, and he went hopping up the golden ladder rung by rung: from bobbin boy to telegraph messenger to railroad clerk, to superintendent to director. Until iron entered his career, if not his soul, and finally steel. At the turn of the twentieth century he wrote an article that ended with the heroic phrase: "Farewell, then, Age of Iron; all hail, King Steel!" He was really proclaiming his own coronation, because he foresaw before anybody the infinite possibilities of steel, for bridge building and steamships, for elevators and knives and forks. Make steel, and make it cheap, and you could own the industrial empire of the new century. Before he was thirty, he had bought a large tract on Oil Creek but soon turned from oil to building, and buying up, iron and steel mills and their tributary coal and iron fields, and then the railroads that brought their products to the Great Lakes docks, and a steamship line that took them on to Europe. His monopoly of steel helped him to weather the depression of 1892, and nine years later he graciously permitted the United States Steel Corporation formed for the purpose to buy him out for $250,000,000. And then he abdicated, or retired, to a castle in the eastern highlands of Scotland. He was sixty- five and he had eighteen years yet to live. And he now began the career of lavish philanthropy that made his name known around the world. Carnegie exemplifies to me a truth about American money men that many earnest people fail to grasp which is that the chase and the kill are as much fun as the prize, which you then proceed to give away. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use. --Rev. William Scott Downey _Proverbs_ [1851] When you have a fortune that is almost hard to imagine, the best thing is not to pass that on to one's children. That distorts their life situation. --Bill Gates (b. 1955) American software pioneer, CEO of Microsoft. Speaking to the British newspaper the Guardian in Noverber, 2002, upon giving $100 million to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS in India his largest single philanthropic gift. Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer. --Joseph Hall (15741656) English bishop, moral philosopher, and satirist. Attributed in _The Columbian Star and Christian Index, vol. 1-2 [1829]. The indigent sick of this city and its environs, without regard to sex, age or color, who may require surgical or medical treatment, and who can be received into the hospital without peril to the other inmates, and the poor of this city and state, of all races, who are stricken down by any casualty, shall be received into the hospital, without charge, for such period of time and under such regulations as you may prescribe. --Johns Hopkins (17951873) American merchant and investor who in his will left large endowments to found Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital. In a letter instructing the first trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland [March 1873]. For of those to whom much is given, much is required. --John Fitzgerald Kennedy (19171963) American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [19611963]. Speech at The State House, Boston, Massachusetts [9 January 1961]. They take the paper and they read the headlines, So they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of breadlines, And they philanthropically cure them all By getting up a costume charity ball. --Ogden Nash (19021971) American writer of humorous poetry. _Happy Days_ [1933] I will enjoy the pleasure of what I give by giving it alive, and seeing another enjoy it. When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument if there were a wanting friend above ground. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. Letter to Jonathan Swift [9 October 1729]. - All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me. They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they told me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wished that the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and beneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes myself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research accomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you each anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it through my investigations. THE GRATEFUL POODLE One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter. But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had been broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast poodle for the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc. SEQUEL The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other dogs-cripples. The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder than ever. The day passed, the morning came. There at the door sat now the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring reconstruction. This day also passed, and another morning came; and now sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and the people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, but the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get mixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibited thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required. But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the pretty part of the story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; this thing has gone along far enough." He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great and good work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and said: "Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poor wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill the applicant." And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. "About Magnanimous-Incident Literature" in _The Atlantic Monthly_ [May 1878]. -  PHILOSOPHY . . see: "BELIEF" for related links see: "KNOWLEDGE" for related links Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems. --Henry Brooks Adams (18381918) American historian & man of letters. In Bert Leston Taylor _The So-Called Human Race_ [1922]. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ [1625] "Of Atheism" The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next. --Henry Ward Beecher (18131887) American Congregational minister; brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher. In Henry Ward Beecher and Edna Dean Proctor, _Life Thoughts: Gathered From the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher_, p. 102 [1858]. All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce_, vol. VIII [1911] There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. --Albert Camus (19131960) French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. _Le Mythe de Sisyphe_ (The Myth of Sisyphus) "Absurdity and Suicide" [1942] The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is the angelic life. --attributed to Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347407) Early Church Father, biblical interpreter, and archbishop of Constantinople. There is nothing so absurd as but some philosopher has said it. --Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 BC) Roman orator and statesman. _De Divinatione_ (On Divination), bk. 2, ch. 119 [44 B.C.] No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _Biographia Literaria_, ch. 22 [1817] You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in. --Oliver Edwards (17111791) English lawyer. In James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] [17 April 1778]. Let no one delay to study philosophy while he is young, and when he is old let him not become weary of the study --Epicurus (341270 B.C.) Greek philosopher. In Diogenes Laλrtius _Lives of the Eminent Philosophers_. What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks that he knows. --Epictetus (55135) Greek philosopher. _Discourses_, 2.17 Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. --Kahlil Gibran (18831931) Lebanese poet. Quoted in _The Wisdom of Gibran: Aphorisms and Maxims_ [Bantam Books, 1973]. Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection --attributed to Piet Hein (19051996) Danish poet and mathematician. Every child who has the use Of his senses knows a goose. See them underneath the tree Gather round the goose-girl's knee, While she reads them by the hour From the works of Scho-pen-hauer. How patiently the geese attend! But do they really comprehend What Schopenhauer's driving at? Oh, not at all; but what of that? Neither do I; neither does she; And, for that matter, nor does he. --Oliver Herford (18631935) American author and illustrator. "Some Geese" Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. --Thomas Hobbes (15881679) English philosopher. _Leviathan_ [1651] Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. --David Hume (17111776) Scottish philosopher. _A Treatise of Human Nature_, bk I [1739] That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. --Francis Hutcheson (16941746) British philosopher. _An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, Treatise II, Section 3 [1725] There is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do [...] contradict other philosophers. --William James (18421910) American philosopher. Speech in Boston, Mass. [7 October 1904]. Philosophy easily triumphs over past ills and ills to come, but present ills triumph over philosophy. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Maxims_ [1665] There is no record in history of a happy philosopher. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow _Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms_ [1955]. Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the process, ignorance the end. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (15331592) French moralist and essayist. _Essais_ (Essays) [pub. 15801588], "Of Cripples" Philosophy drips gently from his tongue Who hath three meals a day in guarantee. --Christopher Morley (18901957) American journalist, novelist, and poet. _Parson's Pleasure_ [1923] "So This Is Arden" He said: Who then are the true philosophers? Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth. --Plato (427?347 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _The Republic_ [c. 380 B.C.] - "But is all this *true*?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends toward guesswork." --Terry Pratchett (b. 1948) English science fiction writer. _Small Gods_ [1992] His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools: the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.' --Terry Pratchett (b. 1948) English science fiction writer. _Small Gods_ [1992] - You might claim as most people do that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice. You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey. Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon who got it from William James. --Ayn Rand (19051982) Russian-born American writer. "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" Address To The Graduating Class of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York [6 March 1974]. - The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _The Problems of Philosophy_, ch. XV "The Value of Philosophy" [1912] Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _Unpopular Essays_ [1950] "Philosophy for Laymen" [Georg Hegel] set out [his philosophy] with so much obscurity that people thought it must be profound. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _Unpopular Essays_ [1950] "Philosophy and Politics" - The Christian usually tries to give away his own money, whilst the philosopher tries to give away the money of someone else. --Lord Salisbury (18301903) British Conservative statesman. Quoted in C.S. Kenny _Property for Charitable Uses_ [1880]. For there was never yet a philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Much Ado About Nothing_, V, i [1598-99] The unexamined life is not worth living. --Socrates (470?399 B.C.) Greek philosopher. In Plato (427?-327 B.C.) _Apology_. I have heard a good story of our friend Charles Fox. When his house [...] was on fire, he found all effort to save it useless, and being a good draughtsman, he went up the next hill to make a drawing of the fire! the best instance of philosophy I ever heard. --Robert Southey (17741843) English poet. Letter to Joseph Cottle [1800] reprinted in Joseph Cottle _Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey_ [1847]. The best philosophy I know [is] to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the Goodness that has given so much happiness with it, whatever it is; and despise affectation. --Horace Walpole (17171797) English writer and connoisseur. Letter to Sir Horace Mann [27 May 1776]. - "A philosopher," said the theologian, "is like a blind man in a darkened room looking for a black cat that isn't there." "That's right," the philosopher replied, "and if he were a theologian, he'd find it." --anon. - ----- aesthetics or esthetics (noun) (used with a sing. verb) A branch of philosophy that deals with formal beauty in art. Epistemology (noun) [κ-pis-tκ-'mah-lκ-jee or -ji] (Philosophy) The study of the nature of knowledge: suppositions, conclusions, and all that happens in between-how we know things; the structure of knowledge itself. ontology (noun) The philosophical study of existence and the nature of reality. 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