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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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Robert Wilson Lynd
Age: 70 †
Born: 1879
Born: April 20
Died: 1949
Died: October 6
Journalist
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Robert Lynd
Bother
Power
Significant
Writing
Field
Every
Fields
Men
Emphasizing
Knowledge
Expense
History
Insignificant
Facts
Expenses
Art
More quotes by Robert Wilson Lynd
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
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
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
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
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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
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
No man is uninteresting when his hat is blown off and he has to scuttle after it down the street.
Robert Wilson Lynd
Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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
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
It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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.
Robert Wilson Lynd
We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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
Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them.
Robert Wilson Lynd
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
Robert Wilson Lynd
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.
Robert Wilson Lynd
A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.
Robert Wilson Lynd
This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.
Robert Wilson Lynd
