Skip to main content
2 months 1 week ago

Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.

0
0
Source
source
p. 193
2 months 1 week ago

I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between "life" and "death"; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

0
0
Source
source
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), "Athenaeum Fragments" § 211
1 month 3 weeks ago

Psychic communal integration, made possible at last by the electronic media, could create the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as no more than broken fragments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness...This is a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ; and Christ, after all, is the ultimate extension of man.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of any one individual.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
3 months 3 weeks ago

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

0
0
4 months 4 days ago

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

No one should try to live if he has not completed his training as a victim.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

0
0
Source
source
Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary, Le Mondain, 1736
2 months 2 weeks ago

And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.

0
0
Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 51
3 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.

0
0
Source
source
p. 85e
3 months 2 weeks ago

Of all things the worst to teach the young is dalliance, for it is this that is the parent of those pleasures from which wickedness springs.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

[One thing] underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals. This one thing is that we take responsibility for our own lives, and make them as free of cruelty as we can. The first step is that we cease to eat animals. Many people who are opposed to cruelty to animals draw the line at becoming a vegetarian. It was of such people that Oliver Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century humanitarian essayist, wrote: "They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion."

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
3 months 3 weeks ago

The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 225-226)
3 months 3 weeks ago

A process which led from the amœba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amœba would agree with this opinion is not known.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
2 weeks 2 days ago

[on Epicurus] His starting point is a conviction that apathy is impossible, and that pleasure - though not necessarily sensual pleasure - is the only conceivable, and quite legitimate, end of life and action. "Nature leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other good" - even the stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation. "We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them". Epicurus, then, is no epicurean, he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quite and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but ataraxia - tranquility, equaninimity, repose of mind; all of which trembles on the verge of Zeno's "Apathy"

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

0
0

Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory," - so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence, - so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.

0
0
Source
source
On the Theory of Light (1828) p.494
2 months 2 weeks ago

Man is a thinking being. His reason enables him to recognize his own potentialities and those of his world. He is thus not at the mercy of the facts that surround him, but is capable of subjecting them to a higher standard, that of reason.

0
0
Source
source
P. 6
2 months 1 week ago

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

0
0
Source
source
p. 63, Ch. 4
1 month 3 weeks ago

With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

All of those who are "without" - without employment, without residence, without housing - are really excluded only in part.

0
0
Source
source
129
1 month 1 week ago

I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?

0
0
Source
source
"Address on University Education" (1876), delivered at the formal opening of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, September 12, 1876. Huxley, American Addresses (1877), p. 125.
4 months 5 days ago

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 109

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

0
0
Source
source
B 30
2 months 3 weeks ago

Of all calumnies the worst is the one which attacks our indolence, which contests its authenticity.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

There is no information about the thingness of the thing without knowledge of the kind of truth in which the thing stands. But there is no information about this truth of the thing without knowledge of the thingness of the thing whose truth is in question. Where are we to get a foothold? The ground slips away under us. Perhaps we are already close to falling into the well. At any rate the housemaids are already laughing.

0
0
Source
source
p. 27
2 months 3 weeks ago

A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people.

0
0
3 months 1 day ago

Pour recueillir les biens inestimables qu'assure la liberté de la presse, il faut savoir se soumettre aux maux inévitables qu'elle fait naître. Translation: In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI.
2 months 3 weeks ago

Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.

0
0
Source
source
Vol II: "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life", as translated by R. B. Haldane, and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (1886), p. 389
3 months 3 weeks ago

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
4 months 3 weeks ago

The majority of mankind and people who lack refinement conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they approve a life of sensual enjoyment.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist-I really believe he is Antichrist-I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you-sit down and tell me all the news.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. I, Ch. I
4 months 3 weeks ago

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

0
0
Source
source
(Luke 6:37-38) (KJV)
2 months 2 weeks ago

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

0
0
Source
source
O World, Thou Choosest Not
4 months 5 days ago

I dare affirm in knowledge of nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism; but on the other side, much natural philosophy and wading deep into it, will bring about men's minds to religion; wherefore atheism every way seems to be combined with folly and ignorance, seeing nothing can can be more justly allotted to be the saying of fools than this, "There is no God" Of Atheism.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction, p. 31.
3 months 3 weeks ago

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2: 'Useless' Knowledge
2 months 3 weeks ago

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

0
0
Source
source
Act I.
2 months 3 weeks ago

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

0
0
Source
source
Letter 19
2 months 1 week ago

Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
4 months 1 week ago

For what is it that everyone is seeking? To live securely, to be happy, to do everything as they wish to do, not to be hindered, not to be subject to compulsion.

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, ch. 1, 46.

One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me - this was before I began going to school - why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: "O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The man of perfect virtue is cautious and slow in his speech. When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking?

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia