The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
Interpretation
True appreciation of beauty comes from deeper understanding, not superficial attraction.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that a superficial love for beauty is akin to dreaming, as it lacks depth and understanding. In contrast, a person who recognizes and appreciates the full essence of beauty is considered 'wide awake,' signifying a greater awareness and insight into the nature of beauty beyond mere appearances.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about art appreciation.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.
One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing. I could stare at the stars for hours, their infinite number and depth pulling me into a part of myself that I ignored during the day.
Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
A man could not always be where he belonged, though.
I wanted to be of service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most effectively, I thought, in the form of a story.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
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