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6 months 2 weeks ago

Since these questions lie in the future, imagination must supply the lack of experienced feeling in attaching value to them. But values can be only imperfectly anticipated.

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8 months 1 week ago

This life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life.

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Letter to Anthony Collins (23 August 1704), in The Works of John Locke, Vol. X (London, 1823), p. 298; quoted by William Julius Mickle in Voltain in the Shades (London, 1770), p. 7
4 months 3 weeks ago

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

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De Ira (On Anger); Book III, Chapter V
4 months 3 weeks ago

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

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Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 83
9 months 5 days ago

The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Know that death comes to everyone, and that wealth will sometimes be acquired, sometimes lost. Whatever griefs mortals suffer by divine chance, whatever destiny you have, endure it and do not complain. But it is right to improve it as much as you can, and remember this: Fate does not give very many of these griefs to good people.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
8 months 1 week ago

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

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Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11
8 months 2 weeks ago

Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoiled it all.

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-- Table Talk, quoted in Luther On "Woman"

Before Descartes, some of the ancients made the essence of matter consist in solid extension. But this opinion, of which all the Cartesians have made much, has at all times been victoriously combated...

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Ch. III Concerning the Extension of Matter
7 months 6 days ago

One principle, that I believe is wanting in you, and all our too fervent and impetuous reformers, is the thought, that almost every institution or form of society is good in its place, and in the period of time to which it belongs. How many beautiful and admirable effects grew out of Popery and the monastic institutions, in the period, when they were in their genuine health and vigour! To them we owe almost all our logic and our literature. What excellent effects do we reap, even at this day, from the feudal system and from chivalry! In this point of view, nothing can, perhaps, be more worthy of our applause than the English constitution.

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Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 March 1812), quoted in Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. II (1858), p. 86
6 months 3 weeks ago

I hope, reader, that some time while our tragedy is still playing, in some interval between acts, we shall meet again. And we shall recognize one another. And forgive me if I have troubled you more than was needful and inevitable, more than I intended to do when I took up my pen proposing to distract you from your distractions. And may God deny you peace, but give you glory!

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6 months 4 weeks ago

With the disintegration of all that Nietzsche had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition.

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p. 45
8 months 4 days ago

I am my world.

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(The microcosm.) (5.63) Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Humans kill one another - and in some cases themselves - for many reasons, but none is more human than the attempt to make sense of their lives. More than the loss of life, they fear loss of meaning.

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In the Puppet Theatre: Roof Gardens, Feathers and Human Sacrifice (p. 87)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.

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Section 25
7 months 6 days ago

A character is a completely fashioned will.

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(vollkommen gebildeter Wille).
9 months 5 days ago

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

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6 months 6 days ago

After childhood, the senses specialize via the channels of dominant technologies and social weaponries.

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Letter to The Listener October 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 443
7 months 5 days ago

I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad.

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7 months 1 day ago

Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, and the living one, and I became dead, but look! I am living forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of the Grave.

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Revelation 1:17-18, NWT
8 months 1 week ago

When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of "duty."

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 2, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
7 months 1 day ago

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nationality, class, race, religion, culture....subgroup identity particularity does not supersede universality and humanity.

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8 months 1 week ago

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

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Sec. 107
9 months 6 days ago

Writing is an addiction more powerful than alcohol, than nicotine, than crack. I could not conceive of not writing.

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1 week 6 days ago

Well, big data sort of does that automatically now....

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4 months 1 week ago

The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter ... But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

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Letter to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress)
5 months 4 days ago

Ignorant as regards the unity of man with himself, the world is still more ignorant in respect to the two other unities - unity of man with God and the universe.

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9 months 6 days ago

But suppose we were to teach creationism. What would be the content of the teaching? Merely that a creator formed the universe and all species of life ready-made? Nothing more? No details?

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7 months 4 days ago

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted as we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return, we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least, wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us to offend her.

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Ch. 56, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
5 months 3 weeks ago

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

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In Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid!", Opinion Journal, WSJ (2006).
9 months 1 week ago
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
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7 months 4 weeks ago

But, when the elements have been mingled in the fashion of a man and come to the light of day, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or plants or birds, then men say that these come into being; and when they are separated, they call that woeful death. They call it not aright; but I too follow the custom, and call it so myself.

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fr. 9 As quoted by John Burnet, Early Greek philosophy (1908) p. 240
6 months 3 weeks ago

Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

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p. 199
1 week 5 days ago

 

See biography for Publilius Syrus:
https://civilsimian.com/Publilius-Syrus

Read Publilius Syrus' work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/180/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

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7 months 4 days ago

To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of being's other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness - the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence.

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Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974) Chapter I, Section 1.
8 months 3 weeks ago

If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.

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7 months 1 week ago

The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.

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Act IV.
8 months 2 weeks ago

There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.

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Aphorism 43
7 months 3 weeks ago

Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."

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57 Lycurgus
8 months 1 week ago

The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem, when it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root, but for man the root is man himself. The clear proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its political energy, is that it proceeds from the decisive positive abolition of religion.

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As quoted from David McLellan, Marx before Marxism, MacMillan, 1980, p. 150.
4 months 4 weeks ago

Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;-till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;-is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Those least responsible for climate change are worst affected by it.

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Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
7 months 1 week ago

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.

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