9
" When I introspect I perceive not merely sensations and ideas but desire, will, ambition, and pride as vital phases of me. Spinoza was right: “desiderium ipsa essentia hominis”—desire is the very essence of man. We are living flames of desire until we admit final defeat. Will is desire expressed in ideas that become actions unless impeded by contrary or substitute desires and ideas. Character is the sum of our desires, fears, propensities, habits, abilities, and ideas. "
― Will Durant , Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God
12
" Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageable, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing. "
― Will Durant , Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God
14
" When my children enter college I trust that education will open to them many paths toward the understanding of life. “May my son study history,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, “for it is the only true philosophy, and the only true psychology.” Psychology is largely a theory of human behavior, philosophy is too often an ideal of human behavior, and history is occasionally a record of human behavior. We cannot trust all the historians, for sometimes, like Akbar’s, they were engaged by their heroes and gave them all the virtues and the victories. But no man is educated, or fit for statesmanship, who cannot see his time in the perspective of the past. Every lad and lass should begin, in high school, an orderly recapitulation of the pageant of history; not, as we used to do, with Greece and Rome, which were the old age of the ancient world, but with Mesopotamia and Egypt and Crete, from which civilization flowed over into Greece and Rome, and through them to Northern Europe and ourselves. "
― Will Durant , Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God
