Skip to main content
3 months 2 weeks ago

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. V, The Reconciliation
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,-the old with a slightly new turn.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: Attention

These examples... show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the Gorilla differs from Man, the other Apes depart still more widely from the Gorilla and that, consequently, such differences of proportion can have no ordinal value.

0
0
Source
source
Ch.2, p. 89
4 months 2 weeks ago

Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2: Leaders and Followers
4 months 1 week ago

Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up - painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other - that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

0
0

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however,consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 19, pg. 594.
3 months 2 weeks ago

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings - of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Since... nature is a principle of motion and mutation... it is necessary that we should not be ignorant of what motion is... But motion appears to belong to things continuous; and the infinite first presents itself to the view in that which is continuous. ...Frequently ...those who define the continuous, employ the nature or the infinite, as if that which is divisible to infinity is continuous.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Whatever can be done another day can be done today.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Donald M. Frame)
0
0
Source
source
Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
4 months 2 weeks ago

The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 145
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.

0
0
Source
source
"Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation," Criticism of the Kantian philosophy, 1818
2 months 1 week ago

Literacy affects the physiology as well as the psychic life of the African.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 38)
3 months 1 week ago

Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws is fear.

0
0
Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 27
4 months 2 days ago

He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.

0
0
Source
source
Cato the Elder
4 weeks 1 day ago

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 113)

When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar
3 months 1 week ago

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Gilbert Imlay
4 months 5 days ago

The idealist tradition, including contemporary phenomenology, has of course admitted subjective points of view as basic and has gone to the opposite length of denying an irreducible objective reality. ... I find the idealist solution unacceptable ...: objective reality cannot be analyzed or shut out of existence any more than subjective reality can. Even if not everything is something from no point of view, some things are.The deep source of both idealism and its objectifying opposite is the same: a conviction that a single world cannot contain both irreducible points of view and irreducible objective reality - that one of them must be what there really is and the other somehow reducible or dependent on it. This is a very powerful idea. To deny it is in a sense to deny that there is a single world.

0
0
Source
source
"Subjective and Objective" (1979), p. 212.
2 months 3 weeks ago

The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Does anyone bathe in a mighty little time? Don't say that he does it ill, but in a mighty little time. Does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity. For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.

0
0
Source
source
(45).
4 weeks 1 day ago

Live always in the best company when you read.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370
3 weeks 3 days ago

Existing social conditions favour the production of an infinite number of acts of violence and there has been no hesitation in urging the workers not to refrain from brutality when this might do them service.

0
0
Source
source
p. 183

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us....

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (13 August 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 5:390
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions.

0
0
Source
source
Definitions - Scholium
3 months 1 week ago

The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.

0
0
1 week 4 days ago

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance. Variant translation: If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

0
0
Source
source
VI, 21

Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to write, lecture and publish for five years after the October Revolution of 1917. He was once detained and interviewed by the fearsome head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Although he was released, the Bolsheviks gradually realized that Berdyaev was unassimilable to their cause and gave him a choice, along with a group of other intellectuals, of exile or execution. Reluctantly, Berdyaev chose exile to Berlin. He was never again to return to Russia.

0
0
Source
source
Richard Schain, in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005), Ch. 7 : Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev - A Champion of the Spirit, p. 44
4 months 1 week ago

If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.

0
0
Source
source
Act 10, sc. 2
2 months 3 days ago

We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking, and so grotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.

0
0
Source
source
'Frederic the Great', The Edinburgh Review (April 1842), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review: A New Edition (1852), p. 802
4 months 3 weeks ago

Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, xxxi
5 months 2 weeks ago
What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him even concerning his own body in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.
0
0
2 months 3 days ago

I have been deep in Plato, Aristotle, and Theocritus ever since I left home, and admiring more and more every day the powers of that mighty language which is incomparably the best vehicle both for reasoning and for imagery that mankind have ever discovered, and which is richer both in abstract philosophical terms and poetical expressions than the English, French, and Latin tongues put together.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Zachary Macaulay (19? August 1820), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807-February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 145
4 months 2 weeks ago

A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

0
0
Source
source
C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
4 months 3 weeks ago

It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.

0
0
Source
source
In Luther, Hartmann Grisar, 1915, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, vol. 4, p. 126,
1 month 1 week ago

Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled.

0
0
Source
source
Epilogue, p. 1206
3 months 2 weeks ago

Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter V
4 months 2 weeks ago

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer's mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia