Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture.
Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.
If refined sense, and exalted sense, be not so useful as common sense, their rarity, their novelty, and the nobleness of their objects, make some compensation, and render them the admiration of mankind.
Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.
Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made.
It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.
Novelty is the universal cry - novelty by hook or by crook! It is an exceedingly common mania among people of inordinate wealth to exact incessantly new or so-called new dishes.
The moralist must praise heroism and condemn cruelty; but the moralist does not explain events.
Enthusiastic Admiration is the first Principle of Knowledge and its last.
I've never had a surprise birthday party. I've had every other type of surprise. I've had surprise beatings, surprise drug tests, surprise daughter I think.
For me, what is most important is the element of surprise. If I can surprise you with every film of mine, that is exactly what I am trying to do.
We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypothesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequaled in the annals of the human race.
No, thank you, I don't mind the rain,' I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.
Most humans know their own "reason" only in the sense that Hume defined it, as "a slave to the passions"-and by "passions" he meant not moral passions or the passions of transcendent genius, but only low appetites or base desires, which society and economy ultimately shape and spur on in us.
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions.
There are three things which the public will always clamour for, sooner or later; namely: novelty, novelty, novelty.