The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
Interpretation
The existence of virtuous individuals suggests a reason for immortality.
William James argues that the presence of morally upright and deserving individuals in the world presents a compelling argument for the concept of eternal life. This idea postulates that those who demonstrate exceptional character or contribute significantly to the well-being of others should be rewarded with immortality, thus giving purpose to the notion of an afterlife.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the legacy of great leaders.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
No experimental result can ever kill a theory: any theory can be saved from counterinstances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms.
It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.
You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?' I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.' That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.
They looked as if nothing had ever touched them--all well-mothered, protected, with a soft sheen of contentment. None of them had ever been in jail, or worked hard with their hands, or even gotten a traffic ticket. Skimmed-milk jollies, the whole bunch.
However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think.
Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
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