What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.
~
The Stark Munro Letters
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
~
The Stark Munro Letters
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
~
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by
Oscar Wilde
You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named.
~
The Lost World
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS--the capablest in the world; a force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of England.
~
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by
Mark Twain
The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
~
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
by
Edgar Allan Poe