When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder.
Interpretation
Excessive focus on a single purpose can lead to unbalance and stress.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell highlights the dangers of concentrating all of one's mental and emotional energy on a singular objective. While dedication is often seen as a virtue, he warns that an imbalance created by neglecting other aspects of life can lead to adverse effects on mental health and overall well-being, potentially resulting in stress or nervous disorders.
In practice
In a seminar about mental health, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of balance in life.
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.
Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God.
Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.
Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood.
Pittsburgh isn't fancy, but it is real. It's a working town and money doesn't come easy. I feel as much a part of this city as the cobblestone streets and the steel mills, people in this town expect an honest day's work, and I've it to them for a long, long time.
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