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4 months 1 week ago

Every rock in the ocean where a cormorant can perch is occupied by our troops - has a governor, deputy-governor, storekeeper, and deputy-storekeeper - and will soon have an archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, with thirty-four professors, educating seventeen ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for each professor, with every species of nonsense, athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous.

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Catholics, published in The Edinburgh Review (1827). See The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. 2. 1859. p. 123.
8 months ago

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

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Chapter XI, Part II, p. 202 (See also Thorstein Veblen).
7 months 3 weeks ago

Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.

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Chapter II, Section 10, pg. 58
8 months 4 days ago

T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.

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Book III, Ch. 7. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness
8 months 5 days ago

A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
6 months 3 weeks ago

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.

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5 months 5 days ago

Like nonhuman animals in human factory farms, free-living nonhumans who are starving - or being disembowelled, asphyxiated or eaten alive - cannot console themselves by chanting the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The moral case for helping other sentient beings, regardless or race or species, does not rest on the distress their plight does (or doesn't) cause spectators.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 2 Apr. 2015
8 months 3 weeks ago

For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.

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"Psychological Observations"
7 months 2 weeks ago

The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred ... Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?

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Vol.1, bk. 2, ch. 2
5 months 2 weeks ago

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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p. 5
3 months 3 weeks ago

We are alive within mystery, by miracle. "Life," wrote Erwin Chargaff, "is the continual intervention of the inexplicable." We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say. The constructions of language (which is to say the constructions of thought) are formed within experience, not the other way around. Finally we live beyond words, as also we live beyond computation and beyond theory. There is no reason whatever to assume that the languages of science are less limited than other languages.

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4 months 1 week ago

Take your fill when the cask is first opened and when it is nearly spent, but midways be sparing: it is poor saving when you come to the lees.

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Line 5 This quote is often directly attributed to Seneca, but he is referring to lines 368-369 of Works and Days by the Greek poet Hesiod, (translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)
6 months 1 week ago

You ask me why I do not write something... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

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Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
7 months 3 weeks ago

But, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations.

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(p. 67)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 50
8 months ago

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so ; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

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Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
7 months 2 weeks ago

The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul.

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As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, i. 15.
7 months 3 weeks ago

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free," said Jefferson, "it expects what never was and never will be."

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Chapter 4 (p. 34)
4 months 6 days ago

The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states that are derived from this practice. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming fullness of crystallized and impersonalized spirit that the personality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact.

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p. 422
6 months 2 weeks ago

I disclose my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

We live to improve, or we live in vain.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
4 months 1 week ago

All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; but the dose makes it clear that a thing is not a poison.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The Left's identity politics poses a threat to free speech and to the kind of rational discourse needed to sustain a democracy... The focus on lived experience by identity groups prioritizes the emotional world of the inner self over the rational examination of issues in the outside world and privileges sincerely held opinions over a process of reasoned deliberation that may force one to abandon prior opinions.

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Against Identity Politics (14 August 2018), Foreign Affairs
7 months 4 weeks ago

Let him sensibly perceive, that the kindness he shews to others, is no ill husbandry for himself; but that it brings a return in kindness both from those that receive it, and those who look on. Make this a contest among children, who shall out-do one another in this way: and by this means, by a constant practise, children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have, good nature may be settled in them into a habit, and they may take pleasure, and pique themselves in being kind, liberal and civil, to others.

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Sec. 110
6 months 1 week ago

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

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p. 153
8 months 4 days ago

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

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Book 2, Ch. 29 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
7 months 4 weeks ago

A man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect?

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"On Noise"
7 months 3 weeks ago

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, - men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority - demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice - comes graceful and beloved as a bride!

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p. 189
8 months 4 days ago

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

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Book III, Ch. 1
7 months 3 weeks ago

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

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Ch. 8
7 months 3 weeks ago

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, - nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
5 months 3 weeks ago

My method is vertical rather than horizontal so the scenery does not change but the texture does.

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Letter to The Listener October 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 318
6 months 2 weeks ago

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

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(John 7:24) (NASB) Variant translation: Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment. (NIV)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

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6 months 1 week ago

Today, tattoos lack symbolic power. All they do is point toward the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.

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(Hays translation) I, 9
8 months 1 week ago

He who created you without you will not justify you without you.

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169
7 months 3 weeks ago

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat,' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Children are all foreigners.

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September 25, 1839
7 months 3 weeks ago

Kant stated defensively that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge. . . to make room for faith," but he had not made room for faith; he had made room for thought, and he had not "denied knowledge" but separated knowledge from thinking.

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p. 14
5 months 3 days ago

The basis of science is the empirical method, which uses the senses to build up a picture of the world; but science tells us that our senses have evolved to help us get by, not to show us the world as it is. Science is only a systematic examination of our impressions, and in the end all each of us has left are our own sensations ... The end-result of the empirical method, then, is that each individual is left alone with their own experiences. We can escape this solitude, Balfour suggested, only if we accept that there is a divine mind.

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Cross-correspondences (p. 69-70)

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