Joseph Wood Krutch
25 quotes
Biography
"It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder."
"In New England the struggle for existence is visibly the struggle of plant with plant, each battling his neighbor for sunlight and for the spot of ground which, so far as moisture and nourishment are concerned, would support them all. Here, the contest is not so much of plant against plant as of plant against inanimate nature. The limiting factor is not the neighbor but water; and I wonder if that is, perhaps, one of the things which make makes this country seem to enjoy a kind of peace one does not find elsewhere."
"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman."
"Outside a million windows, a million birds had sung as morning swept around the globe. Few men and few women were so glad that a new day had dawned as these birds seem to be.... We are likely to awake with an "Oh, dear!" on our lips; they with a "What fun!" in their beaks.""
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either."
"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either."
"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman."
"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without."
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either."
"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers."
"Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude."
"The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only."
"Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia."
"Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do."
"What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants."
"Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are a subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who has suffered from insomnia."
"True tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal personage is compensated for by the dignity and greatness of his character."
"Civilizations die from philosophical calm irony and the sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery."
"Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence."
"Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional forms and ceremonies."
"A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics chemistry or animal behaviour."
"When a man wantonly destroys a work of man we call him a vandal when a man destroys one of the works of God we call him a sportsman."
"Though many have tried no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science which can do so much cannot decide what it ought to do."
"Security depends not so much upon how much you have as upon how much you can do without."