The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
The lapse of ages changes all things - time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.
When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open Path leads to the changeless change - Non-Being, the glorious state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought.
Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Society is an organism which obeys the immutable law of progress; and change, judicious and cautious change, is necessary for the well being, and indeed the preservation of the social system.
In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astounding. Man needs such a life and if it hasn't yetappeared, he should begin to anticipate it, wait for it, dream about it, prepare for it. To achieve this, he has to see and know more than did his grandfather and father.
An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.
The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.To "see the light" too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from you own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.
It is the free alone which never changes, and the unchangeable alone which is free; for change is produced by something exterior to a thing, or within itself, which is more powerful than the surroundings.