Irving Babbitt

"When the element of conversion with reference to a standard is eliminated from life, what remains is the irresponsible quest for thrills."

"The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian, grounds. My own conviction is that if…"

"Those who are filled with concern for the lot of humanity as a whole, especially for the less fortunate portions of it, are wont nowadays to call themselves idealists. We should at least recognize tha…"

"Three or four years ago a distinguished Frenchman, M. Hovelacque, published an article on America in the Revue de Paris in which he maintained that the essential weakness of our American civilization …"

"The assumption is all but universal among those who control our educational policies from the elementary grades to the university that anything that sets bounds to the free unfolding of the temperamen…"

"This higher will is felt in its relation to the impressions and impulses and expansive desires of the natural man as a will to refrain. ... The failure to exercise the will to refrain in some form or …"

"True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard."

"It seems to me imperative to re-establish the true dualism—that between vital impulse and vital control—and to this end to affirm the higher will first of all as a psychological fact. The individual n…"