“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
“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“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“Failure cuts deepter memories than success.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“A cultivated class, for example, finds most difficulty in getting on with another which has acquired part—but only part—of its culture and customs.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“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“It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal behind it.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
— T. E. Lawrence Primary source“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