“The most obvious way of reconciling oneself to death is to make sure of enjoying life before death snatches it from us.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
Man’s Concern with Death (Primary source)
Man’s Concern with Death is a collaborative volume in which Toynbee and several fellow contributors examine death from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The book brings together religious, philosophical, psychological, medical, and forensic viewpoints, making it a distinctively interdisciplinary work.
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“The most obvious way of reconciling oneself to death is to make sure of enjoying life before death snatches it from us. The catchwords Carpe diem and Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die are notorious, and Herodotus has preserved an Egyptian folktale in which the Pharaoh Mycerinus, when the gods had sentenced him to die after enjoying only six more years of life, successfully doubled the term arbitrarily allotted to him by turning night into day. This hedonistic solution of the problem of death is, of course, illusory.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
“History, in the objective meaning of the word, is the process of change; in the subjective meaning, it is the study of how and why one situation changes into another.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Technology is, of course, only a long Greek name for a bag of tools; and we have to ask ourselves: What are the tools that count in this competition in the use of tools as means to power?”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“A life which does not go into action is a failure.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn’t you make the most of it?”
— Ayn Rand Disputed“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have I seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, but I was sure of it that night.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source