Irving Babbitt

Tell him, on the contrary, that he needs, in the interest of his own happiness, to walk in the path of humility and self-control, and he will be indifferent, or even actively resentful.

— Irving Babbitt

The true dualism I take to be the contrast between two wills, one of which is felt as vital impulse (élan vital) and the other as vital control (frein vital).

— Irving Babbitt

The greatest of vices according to Buddha is the lazy yielding to the impulses of temperament (pamada); the greatest virtue (appamada) is the opposite of this, the awakening from the sloth and lethargy of the senses, the constant exercise of the active will.

— Irving Babbitt

The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian, grounds. My own conviction is that if English is to be thus justified it must be primarily by what I am terming the discipline of ideas.

— Irving Babbitt

Those who are filled with concern for the lot of humanity as a whole, especially for the less fortunate portions of it, are wont nowadays to call themselves idealists. We should at least recognize that ideals in this sense are not the same as standards and that they are often indeed the opposite of standards. It would be easy to mention institutions of learning in this country that are at present engaged in breaking down standards in the name of ideals.

— Irving Babbitt

Three or four years ago a distinguished Frenchman, M. Hovelacque, published an article on America in the Revue de Paris in which he maintained that the essential weakness of our American civilization lay in the failure of our education to produce any equivalent of the superior man of Confucius or the καλὸς κἀγαθός of the Greeks.

— Irving Babbitt

True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard.

— Irving Babbitt

When we consider carefully what many of our so-called humanists stand for, we find that they are not humanists but humanitarians.

— Irving Babbitt

What seems to me to be driving our whole civilization toward the abyss at present is a one-sided conception of liberty, a conception that is purely centrifugal, that would get rid of all outer control and then evade or deny openly the need of achieving inner control.

— Irving Babbitt

To glorify man in his natural and unmodified self is no less surely, even if less obviously, idolatry than actually to bow down before a graven image.

— Irving Babbitt

Our most urgent problem just now is how to preserve in a positive and critical form the soul of truth in the two great traditions, classical and Christian, that are crumbling as mere dogma.

— Irving Babbitt

When the element of conversion with reference to a standard is eliminated from life, what remains is the irresponsible quest for thrills.

— Irving Babbitt

The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.

— Irving Babbitt

Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.

— Irving Babbitt

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

— Irving Babbitt

To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it.

— Irving Babbitt

Tell him, on the contrary, that he needs, in the interest of his own happiness, to walk in the path of humility and self-control, and he will be indifferent, or even actively resentful.

— Irving Babbitt

The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people.

— Irving Babbitt