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The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

Robert Wilson Lynd

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Robert Wilson Lynd
Age: 70 †
Born: 1879
Born: April 20
Died: 1949
Died: October 6
Journalist
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Robert Lynd
Human
Possibility
Humans
Short
Danger
Decisive
Military
Illusions
Dangerous
Antiwar
Belief
Appears
Peace
Ancient
War
Illusion

More quotes by Robert Wilson Lynd

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The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.
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It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.
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Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them.
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No man is uninteresting when his hat is blown off and he has to scuttle after it down the street.
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It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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There are travelers who fear to own delicate hands more than to meet a lion, and soldiers who would rather lose a limb than gain a beautiful nose by artificial methods.
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Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
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This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as the master. What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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The lovers of beauty must unite in a league, and carry out some great propagandist work through the country. They must demand the extermination of the bulldog and the dismantling of the cheap villa, both of which are responsible for a deal of our contentment amid ugliness.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news.
Robert Wilson Lynd