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Wed, 19 Nov 2025 - 03:18

There is no city that is truly one other than this city that we are involved in bringing forth.

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Fri, 28 Nov 2025 - 20:15

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

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Fri, 5 Dec 2025 - 19:51

Of all the ways whereby children are to be instructed, and their manners formed, the plainest, easiest, and most efficacious, is, to set before their eyes the examples of those things you would have them do, or avoid; which, when they are pointed out to them, in the practice of persons within their knowledge, with some reflections on their beauty and unbecomingness, are of more force to draw or deter their imitation, than any discourses which can be made to them.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

We thus have a kind of see-saw: first, pure persuasion leading to the conversion of a minority; then force exerted to secure that the rest of the community shall be exposed to the right propaganda; and finally a genuine belief on the part of the great majority, which makes the use of force again unnecessary.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't believe in it at all.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 05:48

There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.

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Wed, 3 Dec 2025 - 23:42

Necessity may be defined in two ways, conformably to the two definitions of cause, of which it makes an essential part. It consists either in the constant conjunction of like objects, or in the inference of the understating from one object to another.

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Fri, 28 Nov 2025 - 20:15

Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.

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Tue, 9 Dec 2025 - 00:33

In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.

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Fri, 7 Nov 2025 - 03:04

For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

How many loaves have ye? 15:34 (KJV)

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 23:17

The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual...it is a form of madness.

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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Fri, 28 Nov 2025 - 20:15

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

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Sun, 23 Nov 2025 - 04:29

If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.

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Tue, 25 Nov 2025 - 02:20

In his arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil. He woke her then and trembling and obedient. She ate that burning heart out of his hand; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 02:53

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

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Wed, 3 Dec 2025 - 22:19

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 21:24

To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.

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Thu, 6 Nov 2025 - 23:24

Confession should be only in secret before God, who knows everything anyway, and thus it could remain hidden in one's innermost being. But at a dinner and a woman! A dinner-it is not some hidden, remote place, nor is the lighting dim, nor is the mood like that among graves, nor are the listeners silent or invisibly present.

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Wed, 3 Dec 2025 - 22:19

The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 06:08

Hence money may be dirt, although dirt is not money.

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 21:06

Mr. Sensible learned only catchwords from them. He could talk like Epicurus of spare diet, but he was a glutton. He had from Montaigne the language of friendship, but no friend.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 05:48

People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 19:56

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.

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Fri, 5 Dec 2025 - 22:45

I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society-from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations-have never been painted in more striking colours: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I.

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Tue, 9 Dec 2025 - 01:12

[S]ubject matters in general do not exist. There are no subject matters; no branches of learning-or, rather, of inquiry: there are only problems, and the urge to solve them.

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 21:06

I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.

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Mon, 10 Nov 2025 - 02:44

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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Wed, 19 Nov 2025 - 20:45

If man of himself could in a perfect manner know all things visible and invisible, it would indeed be foolish to believe what he does not see. But our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

And having said this, Jesus smote his face with both his hands, and then smote the ground with his head. And having raised his head, he said: "Cursed be every one who shall insert into my sayings that I am the son of God." At these words the disciples fell down as dead, whereupon Jesus lifted them up, saying: 'Let us fear God now, if we would not be affrighted in that day.' Ch. 53

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Tue, 11 Nov 2025 - 02:01

Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche.

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Fri, 28 Nov 2025 - 18:52

Whatever you see in the more material part of yourself, learn to refer to God and to the invisible part of yourself. In that way, whatever offers itself to the senses will become for you an occasion for the practice of piety.

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Tue, 18 Nov 2025 - 03:51

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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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

The Kingdom is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. (8)

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Sat, 29 Nov 2025 - 23:28

We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 01:59

Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence. Variant: Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 01:37

Experience teaches only the teachable...

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Wed, 3 Dec 2025 - 03:49

A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 01:59

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom. Variant: There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

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Sun, 30 Nov 2025 - 01:59

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.

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Fri, 7 Nov 2025 - 03:04

.... In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.

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Wed, 5 Nov 2025 - 03:58

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Mark 13:31, KJV

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Thu, 20 Nov 2025 - 03:19

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

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Mon, 8 Dec 2025 - 01:37

Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Grey Life.

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Tue, 9 Dec 2025 - 01:12

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

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Sun, 7 Dec 2025 - 22:49

We have ...as M. Ribot says, not memory so much as memories. The visual... tactile... muscular... auditory memory may all vary independently... and different individuals may have them developed in different degrees. As a rule, a man's memory is good in the departments in which his interest is strong; but those departments are apt to be those in which his discriminative sensibility is high. ...[D]ifferences in men's imagining power... the machinery of memory must be largely determined thereby.

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Sat, 6 Dec 2025 - 21:50

This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.

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