Quotes by Henry Thomas Buckle

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Nothing should be taken seriously.

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The oldest book is a thrilling novelty for one who has not yet read it.

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Nature is like a magician: it must be watched all the time.

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Vaccination is a medical sacrament - a kind of baptism.

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It's amazing how many ignorant people there are in the world. And the rest are fools who think they know everything.

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As long as there is disease, there will be not only fear but also hope.

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Peter remained on good terms with God, even though God healed his mother-in-law.

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Changes represent constancy in changing circumstances.

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Frankly speaking, I don't see the point of exalting the lowly and meek. When they are praised, they are no longer humble and meek.

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A special art is knowing what to ignore. The longer a conversation lasts, the more such art is needed.

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He was born stupid and successfully developed his innate abilities.

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A step is not only from the sublime to the ridiculous, but also from the ridiculous to the sublime.

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The public buys their opinions like they buy meat and milk: so it's cheaper than owning a cow. The problem is that this milk is mostly just water.

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The greatest pleasure for a dog owner is the fact that in his presence he can be silly, and the dog will not only not scold him, but will join him with joy.

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It was wise of God to marry Thomas Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle: thus only two became unhappy, and not four.

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Conscience is extremely well-educated and soon ceases to address those who do not want to listen to it.

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I calmly bear a lie. It's just the inaccuracies that annoy me.

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I hate those who hate God, but it seems to me that God does not hate enough those who hate me.

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I care for truth not for truth's sake, but for myself.

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I keep my books in the British Museum.

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To exist, you have to be more or less religious.

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To create a great thing, man must be not only very industrious but also very lazy.

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What is faith but a purely speculative bet or hypothesis? It should be said, "I bet the Savior exists."

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Man is the only animal capable of remaining on friendly terms with his victims, whom he intends to eat until they are eaten.

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Justice means that I am allowed to do whatever I want.

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I write so much about myself only because this is the subject I am most knowledgeable about.

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What is a mosquito to one, is a camel to another.

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To die is to stop dying.

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To learn to lie, you have to start, as in any other field, with small steps.

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Scarcity is a clumsy attempt to get what is much easier to get through prosperity.

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To lie is to acknowledge the superiority of the person you are lying to.

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A hen is only a means by which an egg produces another egg.

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Brevity is very good if we are understood - or if we are not.

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Business should be like religion and science: feel neither love nor hate.

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Robbers ask for your money or your life, and women ask for both.

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Any fool can tell the truth, but you have to have something in your head to lie cleverly.

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The history of the arts is a history of renaissances.

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The real life of man is that of which he suspects nothing.

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Art can only be learned from those who make a living at it.

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Art is like nature. If you don't let her in through the door, she'll come in through the window.

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Logic and stability are an object of satisfaction to the gods and the lower animals.

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It is better to love and be forsaken than never to have been forsaken.

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Injustice is what prevents me from living according to my own will.

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There is only one thing without doubt: that there is nothing without doubt, therefore you can doubt that there is anything without doubt.

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I don't believe it, God! Help my unbelief!

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Our mistake often does not consist in something done, but in the regrets felt because of it...

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Our spontaneity is only a result of not knowing God's plan.

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Our world is like Noah's Ark: a handful of people and a lot of cattle.

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A fool can paint a picture, and only a smart person can sell it.

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People are usually equally horrified when they hear doubts about the truth of Christianity, and when they see someone actually obeying the Christian commandments.

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Any human creation, be it literature, music or painting, is always a self-portrait.

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The best orator is he who can say as little as possible with as many words as possible.

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The best liar is the one who can tell a minimum number of lies for the longest time.

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Having your own opinion is only possible if you know how to reject it.

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Jesus, I love You, despite all Your faults!

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They say money is the root of all evil. The same can be said about lack of money.

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A fiction is often the mother of necessity.

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All progress is based on the innate requirement of every organism to live beyond its means.

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Any kind of trading is an attempt to predict the future.

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All philosophies are ultimately absurd, but some are more absurd than others.

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Everything we do absolutely unconsciously, is everything without which we would die on the spot.

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Everything must be taken seriously.

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All peoples harbor a secret sympathy for their unclean force.

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We are all aborted fetuses... Some three months after conception, others a hundred years after birth.

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A couple in love is like a sunrise or a sunset: a daily phenomenon, but which is very rarely observed.

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With faith you will succeed a little, but without faith you will succeed nothing.

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Definition is the enclosure of an untamed idea with a wall of words.

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For himself, each is immortal; perhaps man, even though he knows that he must die, will never know that he is dead.

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Invention is the mother of necessity.

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If you follow your mind far enough, you're bound to come up with counterintuitive consequences.

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Living is the same as loving: mind is against, healthy instinct - for.

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Life is the art of drawing comforting consequences from comfortless premises.

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Life is a weariness that grows with every step.

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Life is a violin solo in public, only you learn to play live during the concert.

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Life is a subject that we will get ourselves into if we talk about it too much or too little.

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If you have told someone that you are leaving them an inheritance, then if you are honest you must die immediately.

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The only truly serious belief is that there is nothing in the world that should be taken seriously.

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The stupid invent the fashion and the smart are forced to follow it.

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Arguments have no effect on most of us. Claims work much better.

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Knowledge is not an inert, passive visitor that comes to us whether we want it or not; it must be sought before it is ours, it is the result of enormous labor and therefore of great sacrifice.

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True knowledge consists not in the knowledge of facts, which makes a man a mere pedant, but in the use of facts, which makes a man a philosopher.

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He who flatters his superiors tramples on those who are below him.

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We often meet people whose book science serves as an instrument of their ignorance, people who the more they read, the less they know.

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The keenest observer and the deepest thinker are always the most lenient judges; only a solitary misanthrope, tormented by imaginary sufferings, tends to depreciate a person's good characteristics and exaggerate the bad ones.

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A legislator must seek not truth but utility.

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The only remedy against superstition is knowledge; nothing else can remove this stain from the human mind.

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In the past, the richer Gele countries were those whose nature was most abundant; now, the richest countries are those where man is most active.

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One misconception struggles with another, each destroys its opponent, and from this struggle truth is born. In this lies the history of the development of the human spirit, and from this point of view, the openers of new roads and the founders of new heresies are benefactors of the human race. Whether they were right or not is the most insignificant aspect of the matter. They act upon the spirit as a stimulus, direct its efforts to activity, prompt us to new researches; treat old things in new ways; they overcome everyone's inertia and, perhaps crudely but usefully, fight the love of routine.

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We only need free criticism, and then we can be sure that everything will be put in order, no matter how many mistakes we make.

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The greatest enemy of knowledge is not error, but inertia.

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At the foundation of art and literature, as at the foundation of war, is money.

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No one can escape the impressions of the environment; and what is called a new philosophy or a new religion, is usually not so much the creation of new ideas as of a new direction.

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The philosophy of each specialty is based on the connection of the latter with other specialties, and it must be sought in the points of contact between them.

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The biggest liar is the unconscious liar.

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God was pleased with his work, that's how awful it is.

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After all, pleasure is a far more reliable counselor than justice or a sense of duty.

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In life there are two main rules, one general, one particular. The first one says: sooner or later everyone will get what they want, if they work hard. This is the general rule. The particular rule states that every person, to a greater or lesser extent, is an exception to the rule.

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God is not as bad as he is portrayed but not as good either.

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God cannot change the past, but historians can. And perhaps it is precisely because they provide this service that God tolerates their existence.

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God and the devil achieved impressive results from specialization and division of labor.

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The Bible probably tells the truth, but it cannot be said to be the whole truth and the only truth.

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Apology of the devil: it must be remembered that in this case only one of the parties is listened to, because God wrote all the books of both Testaments.

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The English travel not to see foreign lands, but to see the sun.

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Faith, like everything in nature, follows the path of least resistance.

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In no field of knowledge can you notice so few results with so much activity as in philosophy. For centuries, in all civilized countries, men of the finest spirit and most sincere aspirations have been engaged in metaphysical investigations, and yet at this moment their systems, far from approaching the truth, are actually moving further and further away from it with the progress of science.

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Every scholar knows that the moral system of the New Testament contains no principle which has not been previously expounded, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from heathen writers. To claim that Christianity conveyed such human moral truths is a gross ignorance or deliberate silence of what was explained earlier.

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The locomotive has done more to unite mankind than all the philosophers, poets and prophets since the world began.

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Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about things, and small minds talk about other people.