The humanities need to be defended to-day against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology. Irving Babbitt
The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards. Irving Babbitt
The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism. Irving Babbitt
The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope. Irving Babbitt
To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it. Irving Babbitt
To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy. Irving Babbitt
We may affirm, then, that the main drift of the later Renaissance was away from a humanism that favored a free expansion toward a humanism that was in the highest degree disciplinary and selective. Irving Babbitt
We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration. Irving Babbitt
Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon. Irving Babbitt
