Asylum Quotes (5 quotes)
Asylum. A place where detected lunatics are sent by those who have had the adroitness to conceal their own infirmity.
Webmaster suggests Clara Lucas Balfour probably did NOT originate this quote. She was 23 when it appeared without any author cited in a space-padding group of humourous word definitions in 'Extracts from a Modern Dictionary', New-York Mirror (1831), 9 232. These witticisms appeared in at least eight more different publications before 1835, and more magazines in 1853 and 1861. Finally this quote appears, without citation, in a miscellany compiled by Clara Lucas Balfour (ed.), Sunbeams for All Seasons (New ed., 1861), 14. Balfour gives credits to known writers (such as M.J.A., in Family Herald'), but none appears with the subject quote in her own book. So Webmaster is skeptical of the quote later being attributed to her in Edwin Davies (ed.), Other Men’s Minds, Or, Seven Thousand Choice Extracts on History, Science, Philosophy, Religion (1888), 42.
Our highest claim to respect, as a nation, rests not in the gold, nor in the iron and the coal, nor in inventions and discoveries, nor in agricultural productions, nor in our wealth, grown so great that a war debt of billions fades out under ministrations of the revenue collector without fretting the people; nor, indeed, in all these combined. That claim finds its true elements in our systems of education and of unconstrained religious worship; in our wise and just laws, and the purity of their administration; in the conservative spirit with which the minority submits to defeat in a hotly-contested election; in a free press; in that broad humanity which builds hospitals and asylums for the poor, sick, and insane on the confines of every city; in the robust, manly, buoyant spirit of a people competent to admonish others and to rule themselves; and in the achievements of that people in every department of thought and learning.
From his opening address at an annual exhibition of the Brooklyn Industrial Institute. As quoted in biographical preface by T. Bigelow to Austin Abbott (ed.), Official Report of the Trial of Henry Ward Beecher (1875), Vol. 1, xiv.
Perseverance is the chief, but perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums.
In Orison Swett Marden, 'Bell Telephone Talk: Hints on Success by Alexander G. Bell', How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves (1901), 32.
Such instances of the almost infinite unpredictability of man are known to social scientists, but they are no more affected by them than the asylum inmate is by being told that he is not Napoleon.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 156.
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.
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In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
