Explore Quotes by Mortimer Adler

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.

Being influential is not the mark of a great book.

There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter.

An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.

Idling is important. Most people don't know how. They're afraid of it. This explains why they turn on the television set or pick up the newspaper. They think they have to be doing something.

In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.

Love wishes to perpetuate itself. Love wishes for immortality.

Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure.

Work is toil: what one does only to earn a living. If it gives pleasure, it is leisure.

Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love.

Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.

Philosophy is everybody's business.

Freud's view is that all love is sexual in its origin or its basis. Even those loves which do not appear to be sexual or erotic have a sexual root or core. They are all sublimations of the sexual instinct.

We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.

If we consider men and women generally, and apart from their professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read for all they are worth.

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians.

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.

One of the aims of sexual union is procreation - the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union.

Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable.

Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself.