“don’t die of philosophy”

"What we can be certain of in science is not its metaphysical assumptions but its physical achievements; the steamship, the airplane, and public sanitation are a little more real than this effervescence of test tubes into philosophy. Take a night flight over New York, and feel the reckless courage and power of these machines called men; accept without apology the thrill of peril and speed; rejoice over the realities of science, and smile at its transcendental theories.

There is no knowable limit to what this trousered ape will do with his multiplying discoveries; doubtless he will some day throw his engines around the stars, and deport his criminals to Betelgeuse. If you insist upon dying, undertake tasks of some danger and use in adding to these discoveries; risk yourself in medical or mechanical experiment, and give some significance to your life and death. But whatever you do, don't die of philosophy."

— On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant (1931)
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(The author was writing to a man who'd threatened suicide after reading Herbert Spencer's " mechanical philosophy… a relic of his mid-Victorian simplicity")