The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
Interpretation
True appreciation of beauty comes from deeper understanding, not superficial attraction.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that a superficial love for beauty is akin to dreaming, as it lacks depth and understanding. In contrast, a person who recognizes and appreciates the full essence of beauty is considered 'wide awake,' signifying a greater awareness and insight into the nature of beauty beyond mere appearances.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about art appreciation.
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.
Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
America is a young country with an old mentality.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.
You belong neither to God nor the state nor me. You belong to yourself and no one else.
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