Anthony Ashley Cooper > Quotes

“Those who are ignorant of history and the evolution of taste are apt at every turn to make the present age their standard, and imagine nothing so barbarous or savage but what is contrary to the manners of their own time.”
― Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury

“Tis the hardest thing in the world to be a good Thinker, without being a strong Self-Examiner.”
― Anthony Ashley Cooper III, Soliloquy: Or, Advice to an Author

“I am persuaded that to be a Virtuoso (so far as befits a Gentleman) is a higher step towards the becoming a Man of Virtue and good Sense, than the being what in this Age we call a Scholar.”
― Anthony Ashley Cooper (3rd earl of Shaftesbury.), Characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, times [by A.A. Cooper]. With the addition of a letter concerning design

“It is certain that in matters of learning and philosophy the practice of pulling down is far pleasanter and affords more entertainment than that of building and setting up. Many have succeeded to a miracle in the first who have miserably fallen in the latter of these attempts. We may find a thousand engineers who can sap, undermine and blow up with admirable dexterity for one single one who can build a fort or lay the platform of a citadel. And though compassion in real war may make the ruinous practice less delightful, it is certain that, in the literate warring-world, the springing of mines, the blowing up of towers, bastions and ramparts of philosophy with systems, hypotheses, opinions and doctrines into the air, is a spectacle of all other the most naturally rejoicing.”
― Anthony Ashley Cooper III