
Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.
Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.
If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.
I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is - what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course...
III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.
The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.
... our Lord Jesus Christ ... that He was ... the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin ... and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh.... [Chapter 3] And after his resurrection He did eat and drink with [those who were with Peter], as being possessed of flesh, although spiritually He was united to the Father. Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, chapter 1, 3, shorter version (longer version is similar here). At page 86f of ANF1, that is, Roberts A, Donaldson J and Coxe AC (1885) Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol 1. [c 110 AD.]
The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.
The President ... may err ... Congress may decide amiss ... But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Matthew 7:1-5 (NKJV) (Also Luke 6:37-42)
Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.
The heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God and idol. Ultimately, they put their trust in that which is nothing. So it is with all idolatry. For it happens not merely by erecting an image and worshipping it, but rather it happens in the heart. For the heart seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for anything better than to believe that He is willing to help.
My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.
When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."
Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.
He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades
We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.
As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day.
All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.
You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, - now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.
Lysander said, "Where the lion's skin will not reach, it must be pieced with the fox's."
But capitalist production begets,with the inexorability of a law of Nature,its own negation. It is the negation of negation.
I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think ... and I can't prevent myself from thinking.
Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.
While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.
My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.
Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world, any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.
We always love . . . despite; and that "despite" covers an infinity.
Your employer monitors keystrokes, tracks emails, watches screens, measures productivity down to seconds. Surveillance masquerades as optimization. They say it's efficiency; it's control. Digital panopticon in every workplace, turning workers into performance metrics constantly evaluated and found wanting.
[W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.
Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Jesus in Matthew 28:20
Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.
When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.
You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.
The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends.
In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.
We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.
For it still seemed to me that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us. And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.
To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
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