Samuel McChord Crothers

“ When we sit down with a book, it is hard to realize that we are only conversing with a fellow being who may know little more about the subject in hand than we do, and who is attempting to convey to us not only his life-philosophy, but also his aches and pains, his likes and dislikes, and the limitations of his own experience. When doleful sounds come from the oracle, we take it for granted that something is the matter with the universe, when all that has happened is that one estimable gentleman, on a particular morning, was out of sorts when he took pen in hand. ”

“ HAPPEN to live in a community where there is a deeply rooted prejudice in favor of intelligence, with many facilities for its advancement. I may, therefore, be looked upon as unmindful of my privileges when I confess that my chief pleasures have been found in the more secluded paths of ignorance.
I am no undiscriminating lover of Ignorance. I do not like the pitch-black kind which is the negation of all thought. What I prefer is a pleasant intellectual twilight, where one sees realities through an entrancing atmosphere of dubiety. ”

“ He was as distinctly American as was Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone was no renegade taking to the woods that he might relapse into savagery. He was a civilized man who preferred to be the maker of civilization rather than to be its victim. He preferred to blaze his own way through the forest. When he saw the smoke of a neighbor's chimney it was time for him to move on. So William James was led by instinct from the crowded highways to the dim border-lands of human experience. He preferred to dwell in the debatable lands. With a quizzical smile he listened to the dignitaries of philosophy. ”

“ The Spirit of Democracy will take you to visit a school that is not at all like the school you used to go to, Scrooge. The teacher has forgotten his rod and his rules and his airs of superiority. He is not teaching at all, so far as you can see. He is the centre of a group of eager learners, who are using their own wits and not depending on his. They are so busy observing, comparing, reasoning, and finding out things for themselves that he can hardly get in a word edgewise. And he seems to like it, though it is clear that if they keep on at this rate they will soon get ahead of their teacher. ”

“ Miss Muffet closed her eyes, and had already begun to dream of curds and whey, when all at once she was awakened and found herself in a most wonderful palace. The walls and floors were made of the sheerest, filmiest spider's-web, woven into a thousand delicate patterns. A soft light shone through the tapestries, and the dewdrops on the roof sparkled like diamonds. The music that [19] floated in through the open windows was not so much a sound as a part of the atmosphere. ”

“ The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. This bars out all mere jocosity. A certain kind of wit, which depends for its force on mere verbal brilliancy, has the same effect. The writers whom we love are those whose humor does not glare or glitter, but which has an iridescent quality. It is the perpetual play of light and color which enchants us. We are conscious all the time that the light is playing on a real thing. ”

“ Francis it was Heaven itself.
“Property is robbery,” he would have said, but not in the sense in which a modern communist would use the words. It is the robbery not of one’s neighbor but of one’s self. We take for granted that wealth is a good thing and poverty an evil. No, St. Francis would say, there is no good thing but what is good for the soul. It is good to be humble, sympathetic, and thankful. It is good to be conscious of God’s presence everywhere and to be close to the lowliest of his creatures. ”

“ Formal philosophy seemed to him to be "too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast, slow-breathing, unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. The freedom we want is not the freedom, with a string tied to its leg and warranted not to fly away, of that philosophy. Let it fly away, we say, from us. What then?"
To this American there must be a true democracy among the faculties of the mind. The logical understanding must not be allowed to put on priggish airs. The feelings have their rights also. ”

“ We catch fugitive glimpses of beauty, and try to fix them forever in perfect form,—that is the task of art. We see thousands of disconnected facts, and try to arrange them in orderly sequence,—that is the task of science. We see the ongoing of eternal force, and seek some reason for it,—that is the task of philosophy.
But when art and science and philosophy have done their best, there is a great deal of valuable material left over. There are facts that will not fit into any theory, but which keep popping up at us from the most unexpected places. ”

“ The one thou hast caused to thank thee for satisfying his hunger, the other thou hast made to imitate thee by setting him a worthy example.'
"It is this hunger for simple justice that is the great thing. And there are people who are giving their whole lives to satisfy it. What we need is to realize what it all means, and to get that joyous thrill over it that came to you when you found for the first time that life consisted not in getting, but in giving. It's a wonderful giving, this giving of one's self, and people do appreciate it. ”

“ The editor of the Journal says, “As an example of a mind tremulously apprehensive of sin, loathing it in every form and for its own sake, avoiding even the appearance of evil, rising above all terrestrial considerations, advancing rapidly in holiness, and finding its only enjoyment in the glory of God, probably no similar work in any language can furnish a parallel.” Poor Brainerd! Every step along the heavenly way cost him a pang. He never could forget for more than a few hours at a time that he was human, and to be human was to be vile. ”

“ The sixteenth century marks an epoch in the history of the gentleman, as in all else. Old ideas disappear, to come again in new combinations. Familiar words take on meanings that completely transform them. The same hands wielded the sword and the pen. The scholars, the artists, the poets, began to feel a sense of personal worth, and carried the gallant spirit of the gentleman into their work. They were not mere specialists, but men of action. ”

“ It may be said in extenuation of Dickens that the blemish of obviousness is one which he shared with the world he lived in. It would be too much to say that all realities are obvious. There is a great deal that we do not see at the first glance; but there is a great deal that we do see. To reproduce the freshness and wonder of the first view of the obvious world is one of the greatest achievements of the imagination. ”