Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
Will DurantThe laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.
Will DurantThere is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Will DurantIt is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
Will DurantAll that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think.
Will DurantThe ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Will DurantNature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
Will DurantAnd last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.
Will DurantRome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
Will DurantThe dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day - these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they....who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer's time of plenty.
Will DurantThe love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
Will DurantCivilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.
Will DurantIn its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
Will DurantAs knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
Will DurantIn philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
Will DurantLiberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
Will DurantMusic and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.
Will DurantCultivate your gardenย Do not depend upon teachers to educate you ย follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmonyย In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. "Happiness," said Chamfort, "is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.
Will DurantForget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
Will DurantThe South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.
Will DurantTruth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
Will DurantFrom barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will DurantSixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will DurantSo prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
Will DurantHunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will DurantWe conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
Will DurantHistory repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
Will Durant