The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect
Interpretation
Repeated immoral actions can ruin a person's character, just as constant falsehoods can corrupt one's intellect.
This quote emphasizes the dangers of both moral negligence and intellectual dishonesty. Jacques Barzun suggests that just as small, repeated immoral actions can erode a person's character over time, the continuous repetition of nonsense and half-truths can lead to a degradation of one's intellect. It warns against complacency in both personal ethics and the pursuit of truth, reminding us that even minor infractions, when regularly committed, can have significant long-term consequences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of integrity in personal relationships.
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.
Just go with it. It won't hurt.' I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.
Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.
Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
The only help I need to live, is unprofessional. The only wealth I have to give, is not material. And if you need much more than that, I'm not available.
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.
This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.