An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this w…

- James Vila Blake

Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sou…

- James Vila Blake

The fear of death has been raised too much and set up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness over the heads of t…

- James Vila Blake

when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers t…

- James Vila Blake

Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little t…

- James Vila Blake

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is mer…

- James Vila Blake

The greatness of common sense, and its title to reverence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complexity, that is, with the innumerable elements…

- James Vila Blake

As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in…

- James Vila Blake

Meditation ... must be power of will and strength of attention, being like a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied hard though joyfully.

- James Vila Blake