Will Durant

fallen-leaves

Best Thing: Reviewers praise "Fallen Leaves" for its insightful perspective on history and philosophy, with Will Durant's engaging narrative style making complex ideas accessible and thought-provoking. Worst Thing: Some reviewers note that the book can feel disorganized at times, with a lack of cohesive structure that may leave readers wanting a more focused approach to the topics discussed.

Kindle Highlights: Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God

Highlights

Our children bring us up by showing us, through imitation, what we really are. — location: 176 ^ref-36002

Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old. — location: 185 ^ref-52716

The tragedy of life is that it gives us wisdom only when it has stolen youth. Si jeunesse savait, et vieillesse pouvait!—“If youth knew how, and old age could!” — location: 202 ^ref-56091

happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. — location: 204 ^ref-38255

Every philosopher, like Plato, should be an athlete; if he is not, let us suspect his philosophy. — location: 210 ^ref-6217

The pangs of despised love and the bitterness of truth will not long torture a frame made sound and strong by sleep in the air and action in the sun. — location: 212 ^ref-8238

Discovering the world, youth discovers evil, and is horrified to learn the nature of his species. The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong. Youth, shocked, rebels, and calls upon the world to make itself a family, and give to youth the welcome and protection and comradeship of the home: the age of socialism comes. And then slowly youth is drawn into the gamble of this individualistic life; the zest of the game creeps into the blood; acquisitiveness is aroused and stretches out both hands for gold and power. The rebellion ends; the game goes on. — location: 228 ^ref-38235

is it not time that we should be brave enough to face the issue, and understand that civilization must either restore early marriage or abandon love? — location: 242 ^ref-34078

Desire is too strong to be dammed so unreasonably with moral prohibitions; its power has grown with every generation, for every generation is the result of its selected vigor; soon the flood of life will break through our insincerities and make new ways and morals for us while we shut our eyes. — location: 245 ^ref-50030

YOUTH MIDDLE AGE OLD AGE Instinct Induction Deduction Innovation Habit Custom Invention Execution Obstruction Play Work Rest Art Science Religion Imagination Intellect Memory Theory Knowledge Wisdom Optimism Meliorism Pessimism Radicalism Liberalism Conservatism Absorption-in-future Absorption-in-present Absorption-in-past Courage Prudence Timidity Freedom Discipline Authority Vacillation Stability Stagnation — location: 264 ^ref-41332

forget our radicalism then in a gentle liberalism—which is radicalism softened with the consciousness of a bank account. — location: 290 ^ref-9373

In the romantic years she had been a goddess; suddenly she finds that she is a cook. The discovery is discouraging. Why should she maintain the laborious allurements of dress and rouge for a man who looks upon her as an economical substitute for a maid? — location: 313 ^ref-39805

just as the child grew more rapidly the younger it was, so the old man ages more quickly with every day. — location: 341 ^ref-29381

Desire, not experience, is the essence of life; experience becomes the tool of desire in the enlightenment of mind and the pursuit of ends. — location: 451 ^ref-28588

If I could live another life, endowed with my present mind and mood, I would not write history or philosophy, but would devote myself to establishing an association of men and women free to have any tolerant theology or no theology at all, but pledged to follow as far as possible the ethics of Christ, including chastity before marriage, fidelity within it, extensive charity, and peaceful opposition to any but the most clearly defensive war. I can imagine what fun the wits of the world could have with this paragraph, and I know how unpopular and precarious my proposed fellowship of semi-saints would be; but I would rather contribute a microscopic mite to improving the conduct of men and statesmen than write the one hundred best books. — location: 540 ^ref-52511

I can praise Christianity for winning wider acceptance of moral ideas by transforming these into pictures, narratives, dramas, and art, and thereby helping to tame the unsocial impulses of mankind. — location: 582 ^ref-15137

We do not need a new religion so much as a return to the old one in its essentials and its simplicity. — location: 644 ^ref-24775

Personally I should define morality as the consistency of private conduct with public interest as understood by the group. — location: 703 ^ref-57933

It implies a recognition by the individual that his life, liberty, and development depend upon social organization, and his willingness, in return, to adjust himself to the needs of the community. — location: 704 ^ref-32114

The passage from rural mutual surveillance to concealment of the individual in the urban multitude has almost ended the force of neighborly opinion to control personal behavior. — location: 737 ^ref-59588

  • [[Stories (and religion) as abstraction of greater truths]]
  • [[Consequentialism]]
  • [[Deontology]]