Skip to main content
6 months 3 weeks ago

The process of being brought up, however well it is done, cannot fail to offend.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

No longer let thy breathing only act in concert with the air which surrounds thee, but let thy intelligence also now be in harmony with the intelligence which embraces all things. For the intelligent power is no less diffused in all parts and pervades all things for him who is willing to draw it to him than the aërial power for him who is able to respire it.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 54
5 months 3 weeks ago

The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.

0
0
7 months 3 days ago

You worry whether the drought will end. It is far better that you pray that God may water your mind lest virtue wither away in it. You are greatly concerned with money that is lost or being wasted, or you worry about the advance of old age. I think it much to be desired that you provide first of all for the needs of your soul.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

0
0
Source
source
"Morality and literature," p. 164
4 months 2 weeks ago

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't.

0
0
Source
source
"The Nature of Philosophy" (p. 6)
3 months 2 weeks ago

All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,-to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we wants to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,-whose speech is Song.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

This new philosophy, however, was far from giving the temporal an inherent position and function in the constitution of things. Change was acting on the side of man but only because of fixed laws which governed the changes that take place. There was hope in change just because the laws that govern it do not change.

0
0
5 months 4 weeks ago

The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.

0
0
Source
source
Book One, Chapter II.
5 months 2 weeks ago

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

The young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they, without being mad, could worship Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Thomas Mercer
4 months 6 days ago

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.44
3 months 4 days ago

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

0
0
Source
source
This quote was attributed to Albert Schweitzer by Rachel Carson on p. 17 of her seminal work Silent Spring (1962), and is widely cited on various Internet websites, but an actual source from Schweitzer's works is elusive.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study- It is the study of God through his works - It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection. Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is?

0
0
Source
source
Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation. A Discourse, &c. &c.
5 months 2 weeks ago

I am using the word "perceive". I am using it here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word. If there is thought to be a difficulty here, it is perhaps because there is also a correct and familiar usage of the word "perceive", in which to say of an object that it is perceived does carry the implication that it exists.

0
0
Source
source
The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940).
6 months 3 weeks ago

People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on. Consequently, all these are only ... relatively good. Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto.

0
0
Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 347
6 months 3 weeks ago

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State
2 months 3 weeks ago

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

0
0
Source
source
Book XI, line 652
3 months 1 week ago

He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 310
5 months 1 week ago

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

0
0
Source
source
Perennial fashion - Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
6 months 3 weeks ago

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

0
0
Source
source
Act 3, sc. 5
2 months 3 weeks ago

When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.

0
0
Source
source
The Landscaping of Hell : Strip-Mine Morality
5 months 3 weeks ago

A living language can stand on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of development which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him.

0
0
Source
source
Consequences of the Difference p. 85
6 months 3 weeks ago

The Theophilanthropists do not call themselves the disciples of such or such a man. They avail themselves of the wise precepts that have been transmitted by writers of all countries and in all ages.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction
4 months 1 week ago

Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human-we are a continuum.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

That a woman is presented as a teacher, as a prototype of piety, cannot amaze anyone who knows that piety or godliness is fundamentally womanliness. ... from a woman you learn concern for the one thing needful, from Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat silent at Christ's feet with her heart's choice: the one thing needful.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

0
0
Source
source
"The Expanding Mental Universe", Saturday Evening Post, 7/1/1959
3 months 2 weeks ago

The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in: Errick A. Ford (2010) Iron Sharpens Iron: Wisdom of the Ages, p. 48
5 months 3 weeks ago

You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track - the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Everina Wollstonecraft
5 months 1 week ago

By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply.

0
0
Source
source
p. 153
6 months 3 weeks ago

I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work. 

0
0
Source
source
Variant translations: I may not be better than other people, but at least I am different. If I am not better, at least I am different.
6 months 3 weeks ago

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

0
0
Source
source
After February 22, 1846
7 months 6 days ago

It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.'

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

0
0
Source
source
VII, 11.
5 months 6 days ago

So long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. For it is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in thought and conversation of school-boys than otherwise they would, because their parents keep them at that distance, and in that low rank, by all their carriage to them.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 95
6 months 2 weeks ago

I see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inexitricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years.

0
0
Source
source
As translated by William Richardson in Risk and Meaning, Nicolas Bouleau (translated by Dené Oglesby and Martin Crossley), ed. Springer, 2011
4 months 6 days ago

Compared with the life-span of a human being the time-span of a civilization is so vast that a human observer cannot hope to take the measure of its curve unless he is in a position to view it in a distant perspective; and he can only obtain this perspective vis-a-vis some society that is extinct. He can never stand back sufficiently far from the history of the society in which he himself lives and moves and has his being. In other words, to assert of any living society, at any moment in its life, that it is the consummation of human history is to hazard a guess which is intrinsically unsusceptible of immediate verification. When we find that a majority of the members of all societies at all times make this assertion about their own civilizations, it becomes evident that their guesses have really nothing to do with any objective calculation of probabilities but are pure expressions of the egocentric illusion.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 1
6 months 3 weeks ago

The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

0
0
Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 80
6 months 3 weeks ago

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

0
0
Source
source
Boston
4 months 3 weeks ago

Youth instinctively understand the present environment - the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

...out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man.

0
0
Source
source
p. 7
2 weeks 1 day ago

Buddhists know this....

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
4 months 1 week ago

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.

0
0
Source
source
p. 231

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia