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3 months 2 weeks ago

Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world. ...And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.

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6 months 2 days ago

In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
2 months 1 week ago

The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the Discipline of the Church."

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.

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Maxim 750
2 months 4 weeks ago

It's easy to support the status quo if one is not another of its victims.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 4 Dec. 2015
4 months 2 weeks ago

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Many conservative writers have contended that the tendency to equality in modern social movements is the expression of envy. In this way they seek to discredit this trend, attributing it to collectively harmful impulses.

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Chapter IX, Section 82, p. 538
5 months 3 weeks ago

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

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Chapter I, p. 7
4 months 2 weeks ago

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

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Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
4 months 3 weeks ago

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult-to begin a war and to end it.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
4 months 1 week ago

Artist and perceiver alike begin with what may be called a total seizure, an inclusive qualitative whole not yet articulated, not distinguished into members.

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p. 199
3 months 2 weeks ago

He sleeps well who knows not that he sleeps ill.

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Maxim 77
6 months 1 week ago

The end of living, or the ultimate good, which is to be sought for its own sake, according to the universal opinion of mankind, is happiness; yet men, for the most part, fail in the pursuit of this end, either because they do not form a right idea of the nature of happiness, or because they do not make use of proper means to attain it.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.

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Letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792-August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219
2 months 1 week ago

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
6 months 2 weeks ago

History is a story without an end.

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4 months 6 days ago

Jesus said that God was not the God of the dead, but of the living. And the other life is not, in fact, thinkable to us except under the same forms as those of this earthly and transitory life.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

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Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
3 months 2 weeks ago

If you want to be happy, be.

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Attributed in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 352
1 month 2 weeks ago

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say; by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the support of his country.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

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1 month 4 weeks ago

We must not suppose any corporeal conjunction or marriage in the case - all which are merely the sportive fables of Poetry; but must hold the father and the producer of that Being as something most divine and super-eminent. Of such a nature is He who is above all things, around whom, and by reason of whom, all things do subsist. But Homer calls him by his father's name, "Hyperion," in order to show that he is independent, and not subjected to any constraint.

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6 months 3 days ago

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

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Book I, ch. 29, 1
4 months 1 week ago

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.

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p. 188
4 months 3 weeks ago

This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance - a changeable, mobile face, subject to decay, of an immobile, permanent and eternal being.

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As translated by Paul Harrison
5 months 3 weeks ago

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

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Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation
4 months 1 week ago

While there may exist no more than the normal extent of disagreement about the meaning of particular terms or theses contained in these works, there is a startling degree of divergence about the central view, the basic political attitude of Machiavelli.

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4 months 1 week ago

The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalized, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society.

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pp. 21-22.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow. I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

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Solution, ll. 35-42
4 months 1 week ago

Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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8:10-12 (KJV) Said about the officer.
4 months 2 weeks ago

In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness is a direct feeling of its contents as spread out. In an infinitesimal interval we directly perceive the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle, and end... Now upon this interval follows another, whose beginning is the middle of the former, and whose middle is the end of the former. Here we have an immediate perception of the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle and end, or say, of the second, third, and fourth instants.

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6 months 1 week ago

To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.

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3 months 2 days ago

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

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"Man and Hunger: The Perspectives of History", Speech to the World Food Congress (4 June 1963)
6 months 2 weeks ago

In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.

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2 months 4 days ago

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
6 months 1 week ago

To throw oneself into strange teachings is quite dangerous.

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3 months 2 days ago

Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its extraordinary material triumphs in our time are not to bring human history to an abrupt, unpleasant and discreditable end.

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"A Turning Point in Man's Destiny", The New York Times Magazine (26 December 1954) p. 5

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth; Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.

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Distichs in The Poems of Goethe (1853) as translated in the original metres by Edgar Alfred Bowring
3 months 2 weeks ago

The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
3 months 2 weeks ago

When reason rules, money is a blessing.

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Maxim 50
3 months 2 weeks ago

Today we experience, in reverse, what pre-literate man faced with the advent of writing.

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p. 273
4 months 2 weeks ago

Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. ... If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. ... You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'

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Pilgrim's Regress 63

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