For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.

A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

India was the motherland of our race and Samskrit the mother of Europe 's languages...Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.