Owen Barfield quotes

In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.
-- Owen Barfield

#Life #Attitude #Sleep

The obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to anyone who has genuinely lost sight of it.
-- Owen Barfield

#Sight #Lost #Obvious

When the velocity of progress increases beyond a certain point, it becomes indistinguishable from crisis.
-- Owen Barfield

#Progress #Velocity #Certain

By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature--for instance in a biological survey of evolution--we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.
-- Owen Barfield

#Men #Historical #Would Be

There is no surer or more illuminating way of reading a man's character, and perhaps a little of his past history, than by observing the contexts in which he prefers to use certain words.
-- Owen Barfield

#Reading #Character #Men

And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?
-- Owen Barfield

#Essence #Language #Relation

When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.
-- Owen Barfield

#Significant Change #Community #Shifting

...the poet, while creating anew, is likely to be in a sense restoring something old.
-- Owen Barfield

#Creating #Poet #Restoring

Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.

If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth.

You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind ON, but what you can't keep your mind OFF.

If you would be a better teacher, teach by the spirit. That is the thing that gives strength and power, meaning and life, to our otherwise weak efforts... remember, you cannot give away that which you do not possess. Study the life of the master. You do not have to have a college degree to be an efficient teacher. But you do have to become acquainted with the life and teachings of the master to be an effective teacher in the church.

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life.

In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned.

Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.

If there is any way you can get colder than you do when you sleep in a bedding roll on the ground in a tent in southern Tunisia two hours before dawn, I don't know about it.

The Sunflow'r, thinking 'twas for him foul shame To nap by daylight, strove t' excuse the blame; It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, But too great weight and largeness of his head.

Speaking of sleeping bags, has anything ever had a less creative name?