The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. The… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Teachers ... preach "the superiority of the intelligence"; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the practical. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am,"… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle's remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things which cannot be shared. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant. — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction… — Julien Benda Copy Share Image
