Skip to main content
6 months 3 weeks ago

A diversity of opinion upon almost every principle of politics, had indeed drawn a strong line of separation between them and some others. However, they were desirous not to extend the misfortune by unnecessary bitterness; they wished to prevent a difference of opinion on the commonwealth from festering into rancorous and incurable hostility. Accordingly they endeavoured that all past controversies should be forgotten; and that enough for the day should be the evil thereof. There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Men may tolerate injuries, whilst they are only personal to themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation the indignities that are offered to our country.

0
0
Source
source
Describing the Government's position at a previous time of deep division in British politics in fact over policy on America, Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 2
4 months 1 week ago

Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

0
0
Source
source
p. 491
5 months 2 weeks ago

Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 170
6 months 3 weeks ago

These Lectures, conjoined with those which have already appeared under the titles of "The Characteristics of the Present Age," and "The Nature of the Scholar," in the latter of which the tone of thought that governs the present course is applied to a particular subject, form a complete scheme of popular instruction, of which the present work exhibits the highest and clearest summit; and, taken together, they are the result of a process of self-culture, unceasingly pursued during the last six or seven years of my life, with greater leisure and in riper maturity, by means of that Philosophy in which I have been a partaker for thirteen years, and which, although, I hope, it has changed many things in me, has nevertheless itself suffered no change whatever during that period.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
6 months 1 week ago

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

0
0
Source
source
No. 3. (Zachi writing to Usbek)
4 months 1 week ago

The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-round regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.

0
0
4 months 2 days ago

Do unto others as you would have done to you.....says the sadistic, masochistic psychopath.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in: Joan Klostermann-Ketels (2011) HumaniTrees, p. 96
7 months 3 weeks ago

It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero will then know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely.

0
0
Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 273
4 months 1 week ago

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 372

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153
7 months 3 weeks ago

The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

0
0
Source
source
Section 2, paragraph 13.
4 months ago

Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
7 months 3 weeks ago

I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles.

0
0
Source
source
"Miracles" (1942), p. 25

Aims, principles, &c., have a place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only; but not yet in the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only, is a possibility, a potentiality; but has not yet emerged into Existence. A second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality - viz. actuation, realization; and whose motive power is the Will - the activity of man in the widest sense.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

0
0
Source
source
Quotation and Originality
7 months 3 weeks ago

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

0
0
Source
source
p. 61
6 months 3 weeks ago

We scarce ever had a prince, who by fraud, or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We scarce ever had a parliament which knew, when it attempted to set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

0
0
Source
source
Dover 2005, p. 79
6 months 6 days ago

Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 3, pg. 59
5 months 2 weeks ago

Casting my perils before swains.

0
0
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.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

God!' said the Ghost, glancing around the landscape. 'God what?' asked the Spirit. 'What do you mean, "God what"?' asked the Ghost. 'In our grammar God is a noun' said the Spirit.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 9
5 months 1 week ago

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Macvey Napier
3 months 3 weeks ago

'Form' or 'figure' is space limited by boundaries. Space has necessarily 'three' dimensions, length, breadth, depth; and no ethers which cannot be resolved into these.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 277
8 months 3 weeks ago

According to one mode... nature is thus denominated, viz. the first subject matter to every thing which contains in itself the principle of motion and mutation. But after another mode it is denominated form, which subsists according to definition: for as art is called that which subsists according to art, and that which is artificial; so likewise nature is both called that which is according to nature, and that which is natural. ...that which is composed from these is not nature, but consists from nature; as, for instance, man. And this is nature in a greater degree than matter: for every thing is then said to be, when it is form in energy... entelecheia, rather than when it is incapacity.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, don't lay hold on the action by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be carried; but by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it, as it is to be carried.

0
0
Source
source
(43).
8 months 1 week ago

After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Allow me, excellent Lucilius, to utter a still bolder word: if any goods could be greater than others, I should prefer those which seem harsh to those which are mild and alluring, and should pronounce them greater. For it is more of an accomplishment to break one's way through difficulties than to keep joy within bounds.

0
0
8 months ago

Faith, like light, should ever be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren.

0
0
Source
source
p. 220
7 months 3 weeks ago

How shall we define a god? Expressed in psychological terms (which are primary-there is no getting behind them) a god is something that gives us the peculiar kind of feeling which Professor Otto has called "numinous". Numinous feelings are the original god-stuff from which the theory-making mind extracts the individualised gods of the pantheon.

0
0
Source
source
"Meditation on the Moon"
5 months 1 day ago

Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

0
0
Source
source
"Death"
4 months 3 days ago

Our trouble is that we have ignored and thus feel insecure in the enormous spectrum of love which lies between rather formal friendship and genital sexuality, and thus are always afraid that once we overstep the bounds of formal friendship we must slide inevitably to the extreme of sexual promiscuity.

0
0
Source
source
p. 91
4 months 1 week ago

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. III, ch. 11.
7 months 4 days ago

In this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

0
0
Source
source
Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605) Book II, xx, 8.
6 months 3 weeks ago

So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

0
0
Source
source
Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.
8 months 3 weeks ago

My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is... carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young. ...Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 115
6 months 6 days ago

But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

0
0
Source
source
All About Love: New Visions, 1999
3 weeks 1 day ago

Losing my 20/20 vision killed me....

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

When common words are appropriated as technical terms, their meaning may be modified, and must be rigorously fixed.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors.

0
0
Source
source
p 23
3 months 3 weeks ago

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Edward Dowse
4 months 1 week ago

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.

0
0
Source
source
Vagueness', first published in The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, 1 June, 1923
7 months 3 weeks ago

...You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

0
0
Source
source
"The Moral Arguments for Deity"

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia