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If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.

Irving Babbitt

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Irving Babbitt
Age: 67 †
Born: 1865
Born: August 2
Died: 1933
Died: July 15
Journalist
Literary Critic
Dayton
Ohio
Went
Melodrama
Might
Hairstyles
Men
Affirm
Tempted
Essence
Saws
Simply
Democracy

More quotes by Irving Babbitt

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We may affirm, then, that the main drift of the later Renaissance was away from a humanism that favored a free expansion toward a humanism that was in the highest degree disciplinary and selective.
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The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.
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A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.
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The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.
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Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.
Irving Babbitt
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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.
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The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
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Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.
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A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.
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Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.
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If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.
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A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself spiritually the underdog.
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It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.
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According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.
Irving Babbitt
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Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.
Irving Babbitt
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Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.
Irving Babbitt
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Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon.
Irving Babbitt
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Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.
Irving Babbitt
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The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.
Irving Babbitt
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An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
Irving Babbitt