To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Interpretation
Intelligent use of leisure time is a marker of advanced civilization, yet few have mastered it.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of using leisure time wisely as a true hallmark of a developed society. He suggests that while many people may have the opportunity for leisure, the ability to engage with it thoughtfully and meaningfully is rare, highlighting a gap in societal progress.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of work-life balance, this quote could highlight the necessity of using free time wisely.
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.
Once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
It wasn't until I had performed by first autopsy that I realized that even the drabest human exteriors could contain the most beautiful viscera. After that, I would console myself for the plainness of my fellow bus-riders by dissecting them in my imagination.
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
Since Satan can't destroy the gospel, he has too often neutralized its usefulness by addition, subtraction or substitution.
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