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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

The South has conquered nothing - but a graveyard.

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Fri, 7 Nov 2025 - 03:04

Therefore only an utterly senseless person can fail to know that our characters are the result of our conduct.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:11
One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
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Thu, 6 Nov 2025 - 23:24

If one prefers to have little with blessing, to have truth with concern, to suffer instead of exulting over imagined victories, then one presumably will not be disposed to praise the knowledge, as if what it bestows were at all proportionate to the trouble it causes, although one would not therefore deny that through its pain it educates a person, if he is honest enough to want to be educated rather than to be deceived, out of the multiplicity to seek the one, out of abundance to seek the one thing needful, as this is plainly and simply offered precisely according to the need for it.

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Fri, 7 Nov 2025 - 03:04

[T]hey pronounce absurdly who thus speak, as the Pythagoreans assert: for at the same time they make the infinite to be essence, and distribute it into parts.

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Sat, 29 Nov 2025 - 23:28

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 04:44

In my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 19:56

The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.

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Thu, 20 Nov 2025 - 03:19

I will speak in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear me. For men are not wanting who would be glad to excite that people against me and against every eminent man; and I will not assist them and enable them to do so more easily.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:53

Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:19

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 05:48

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:53

A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 04:29

It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying 'I want to kill you with them', because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 19:56

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare, To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.

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Fri, 5 Dec 2025 - 22:45

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 01:04

So when the universe was quickened with soul, God was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more like its type. And whereas the type is eternal and nought that is created can be eternal, he devised for it a moving image of abiding eternity, which we call time. And he made days and months and years, which are portions of time; and past and future are forms of time, though we wrongly attribute them also to eternity. For of eternal Being we ought not to say 'it was', 'it shall be', but 'it is' alone: and in like manner we are wrong in saying 'it is' of sensible things which become and perish; for these are ever fleeting and changing, having their existence in time.

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Fri, 28 Nov 2025 - 20:15

Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:19

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:19

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

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Thu, 4 Dec 2025 - 22:44

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 01:04

How natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen. The latter always have leisure, and they talk at their leisure in peace; and they do not care at all whether their talk is long or short, if only they attain the truth. But the men of the other sort are always in a hurry and the other party in the suit does not permit them to talk about anything they please.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 01:59

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

Modern physics... reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.

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Tue, 18 Nov 2025 - 01:07

All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The courses of the seasons, and of the sun and moon, are pursued without any collision among them. The smaller energies are like river currents; the greater energies are seen in mighty transformations. It is this which makes heaven and earth so great.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 01:04

I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.

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Fri, 7 Nov 2025 - 03:04

This opinion... appears to be ancient... that the one, excess and defect, are the principles of things... It is not... probable that there are more than three principles... [E]ssence is one certain genus of being: so that principles will differ from each other in prior and posterior alone, but not in genus, for in one genus there is always one contrariety, and all contrarieties appear to be referred to one. That there is neither one element, therefore, nor more than two or three, is evident.

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone, all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.

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Sat, 29 Nov 2025 - 23:28

If it were art to overcome heresy with fire, the executioners would be the most learned doctors on earth.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

The elders of the Jews answered and said unto Jesus: What shall we see? Firstly, that thou wast born of fornication; secondly, that thy birth in Bethlehem was the cause of the slaying of children; thirdly, that thy father Joseph and thy mother Mary fled into Egypt because they had no confidence before the people. Acts of Pilate, or The Gospel of Nicodemus (ca. 150-255)

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:53

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

Behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. 19:2-10

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 22:49

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

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Fri, 5 Dec 2025 - 22:45

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

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Thu, 4 Dec 2025 - 22:44

Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a member of the commonwealth.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and saga of the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

Only that position can impart dignity in which we do not appear as servile tools but rather create independently within our circle.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 01:59

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

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Wed, 3 Dec 2025 - 22:19

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

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