Reflections of a Russian Statesman

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Page 152 - And call no man your father upon the earth : for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
Page 171 - The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire.
Page 165 - The more our thoughts widen and deepen, as the universe grows upon us and we become accustomed to boundless space and time, the more petrifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, the more contemptible become the pettiness, shortness, fragility of the individual life.
Page 52 - Justice in the functions of the Jury. The Jury — technically known as the 'country' — is the old adjudicating Democracy, limited, modified, and improved, in accordance with the principles suggested by the experience of centuries, so as to bring it into harmony with modern ideas of judicial efficiency.* The change which has had to be made in it is in the highest degree instructive. The Jurors are twelve, instead of a multitude. Their main business is to say
Page 165 - The whole moral world is reduced to a point, the spiritual city, ' the goal of all the saints' dwindles to the 'least of little stars'; good and evil, right and wrong, become infinitesimal, ephemeral matters, while eternity and infinity remain attributes of that only which is outside the realm of morality. Life becomes more intolerable the more we know and discover, so long as everything widens and deepens except our own duration, and that remains as pitiful as ever. The affections die away in a...
Page 124 - ... the wisest man and profoundest thinker of the age ' is the royal one of never hearing the plain, ' unornamented ' truth spoken ; everyone striving to be wise and profound invitd naturd in the presence of such a one, and making himself as much as possible into his likeness. And this is the reason that Arthur Helps and so many others talk very nicely to me, and bore you to distraction. With me they are not afraid to stand on the little ' broad basis ' of their own individuality, such as it is....
Page 82 - Honour thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness [against thy neighbour]. Thou shalt not covet [thy neighbour's house].
Page 20 - This is no more than a lying formula ; Parliamentarism is the triumph of egoism — its highest expression." " From the day that man first fell, falsehood has ruled the world, ruled it in human speech, in the practical business of life, in all its relations and institutions.
Page 11 - But in our times a new means has been found of working the masses for political aims, and joining them in adventitious alliances by provoking a fictitious community of views. This is the art of rapid and dexterous generalisation of ideas, the composition of phrase and formulas, disseminated with the confidence of burning conviction as the last word of science, as dogmas of politicology, as infallible appreciations of events, of men, and of institutions. At one time it was believed that the faculty...
Page 171 - For, the thought that our dead parents or friends would have approved our conduct is a scarcely less powerful motive than the knowledge that our living ones do approve it: and the idea that Socrates, or Howard or Washington, or Antoninus, or Christ, would have sympathized with us, or that we are attempting to do our part in the spirit in which they did theirs, has operated on the very best minds, as a strong incentive to act up to their highest feelings and convictions.

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