Norman Douglas Quotes

Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.

Hear the words of prudence, give heed unto her counsels, and store them in thine heart; her maxims are universal, and all the virtues lean upon her; she is the guide and the mistress of human life.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.

That's the thing about a folk tale: It is always addressing incredibly key issues about how you should live and what the right thing to do is, which is really what I'm the most interested in - like the questions that religion takes on. And I think that, for those of us that aren't religious, we need, or I need, art that stimulates the same kind of thinking about what it is to be a mensch, or a good man, things like that.

The learned man's life itself shines as the message for mankind.

O philosophy, you leader of life.

One of them is knowing the difference between Morality and Wisdom. Morality is temporary, Wisdom is permanent… Ho ho. Take that one to bed with you tonight.

I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.

He that lays down precepts for the governing of our lives, and moderating our passions, obliges humanity not only in the present, but in all future generations.

Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.

I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.

Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.

The Sermon on the Mount...went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, the 'Light of Asia' and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.

The gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation in life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations!

Ethics is inescapable.

A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.

Goodness shapes our will, and truth shapes our understanding.

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38