Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
War has its evils. In all ages it has been the minister of wholesale death and appalling desolation; but however inscrutable to us, it has been made, by the Allwise Dispenser of events, the instrumentality of accomplishing the great end of human elevation and human happiness .... It is in this view that I subscribe to the doctrine of manifest destiny.
The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Away with tears and fears and troubles! United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends into the Heaven of Heavens. So it would be impious to call ourselves 'miserable.' On the contrary, Man is a creature whom the Angels-were they capable of envy-would envy. Let us lift up our hearts!
Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?
Well, I'm an artist to the core. And my objective has always been to use my talents and my skills to elevate humanity through my art.
To me, the theatre - I don't like to say it, but I'll say it - is a temple in a kind of way, where human beings go to be elevated.
Literature is well enough, as a time-passer, and for the improvement and general elevation and purification of mankind, but it has no practical value.
Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.
Just like music, sports elevates us to new levels of achievment.
a great moment raises most of the people who experience it, to its own level; and that is why they do not always recognize its greatness - or their own.
Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or, the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge.
We're trying to elevate humanity and not preach to humanity in the way we approach our art. We're always just trying to get a good party going.
All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union, and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another.
