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David Hume
David Hume
1 month 3 weeks ago
Custom, then, is the great guide...

Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. Variant (perhaps a paraphrase of this passage): It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
I have seen manners that make...

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
I hardly know an intellectual man,...

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, - that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
The dreamer must contaminate the others...

The dreamer must contaminate the others by his dream, he must make them fall into it.

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p. 399
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
I wish to suggest that a...

I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

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pp. 486-7
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 3 weeks ago
Tous les genres sont bons, hors...

All styles are good except the boring kind.

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L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
When you read God's Word, in...

When you read God's Word, in everything you read, continually to say to yourself: It is I to whom it is speaking - this is earnestness, precisely this is earnestness. Not a single one of those to whom the cause of Christianity in the higher sense has been entrusted forgot to urge this again and again as most crucial, as unconditionally the condition if you are to come to see yourself in the mirror.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
2 months 1 week ago
Come the Day of Judgment, some...

Come the Day of Judgment, some believe that the body will be different from our present body. This is only transient, that will be eternal. For this also there are religious arguments.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every intrusion of the spirit that...

Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 3 weeks ago
Though the principles of the banking...

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.

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Chapter I, Part III, p. 820.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
No one is so modest as...

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 days ago
God is nothingness: He is 'beyond...

God is nothingness: He is 'beyond all speech.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 weeks 2 days ago
The whole nature of man presupposes...

The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc.

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"Two Essays in Analytical Psychology" In CW 7: P. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 weeks 5 days ago
"Can any good come out of...

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

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As quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
To choose this or that is...

To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

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Existentialism and Human Emotions
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Most people would sooner die than...

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
In these frequent talks about the...

In these frequent talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him in my own words. He also made me read, and give him a verbal account of, many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself: among others, Millar's Historical View of the English Government, a book of great merit for its time, and which he highly valued; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, McCrie's Life of John Knox, and even Sewel's and Rutty's Histories of the Quakers. He was fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming them: of such works I remember Beaver's African Memoranda, and Collins's account of the first settlement of New South Wales.

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(p. 8)
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
6 days ago
Conduct, practice, is the proof of...

Conduct, practice, is the proof of doctrine, theory. "If any man will do His will - the will of Him that sent me," said Jesus, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself" (John vii. 17); and there is a well known saying of Pascal: "Begin by taking holy water and you will end by becoming a believer." And pursuing a similar train of thought, Johann Jakob Moser, the pietist, was of the opinion that no atheist or naturalist had the right to regard the Christian religion as void of truth so long as he had not put it to the proof by keeping its precepts and commandments.

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(Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, book viii., 43)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
The plain fact is that men's...

The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 days ago
Full of gods means full of...

Full of gods means full of meaning, full of narration. The world becomes readable, like a picture.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 4 days ago
Does anyone bathe in a mighty...

Does anyone bathe in a mighty little time? Don't say that he does it ill, but in a mighty little time. Does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity. For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.

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(45).
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 6 days ago
All those instances to be found...

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
2 weeks 6 days ago
If the State, modeled after the...

If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings - wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things - then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist - even in the most perfect State - other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults.

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P. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 6 days ago
All writers, not ours alone but...

All writers, not ours alone but foreigners also, who have sought to represent Absolute Beauty, were unequal to the task, for it is an infinitely difficult one. The beautiful is the ideal ; but ideals, with us as in civilized Europe, have long been wavering. There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel.

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Letter to his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna, Geneva, January 1, 1868. Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to His Family and Friends (1879), Dostoevsky's Letters XXXIX, p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
Magister Adler was deeply moved by...

Magister Adler was deeply moved by something higher, but now when he wants to express his thoughts in words, wants to communicate, he confuses the subjective with the objective, his altered subjective state with an external event, the dawning of a light upon him with the coming into existence of something new outside him, the falling of the veil from his eyes with his having had a revelation. Subjectively his emotion is carried to the extreme; he wants to select the most powerful expression to describe it and by means of a mental deception grasps the objective qualification: having had a revelation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Men tend to have the beliefs...

Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.

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In London Calling (1947), p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
3 weeks 5 days ago
In the pursuit of truth we...

In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point. Almost all philosophers utter the caution; few observe it.

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Paragraph 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Gentlemen, there is a sublime and...

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, - the race never dying, the individual never spared, - to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 3 weeks ago
The directors of such [joint-stock] companies,...

The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, orig.p. 233.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 2 weeks ago
The desire to philosophize from the...

The desire to philosophize from the standpoint of standpointlessness, as a purportedly genuine and superior objectivity, is either childish, or, as is usually the case, disingenuous.

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The Essence of Truth, 1931-32
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
What we call Man's power over...

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 1 week ago
To become like God is the...

To become like God is the ultimate end of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 1 week ago
We must consider both the ultimate...

We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 3 weeks ago
I am convinced that everything has...

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.

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M. de Voltaire par M. Bailly et précédées de quelques lettres de M. de Voltaire a l'auteur, Paris 1777, quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (2001), Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
1 month 3 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
5 days ago
I see myself immersed in the...

I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

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As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
5 days ago
The dressing up and puffing up...

The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.

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p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is our interest and our...

It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.

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Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals],...

They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.

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3930
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
Keep the faculty of effort alive...

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
It seemed to him [Euphemius] it...

It seemed to him [Euphemius] it would be a brilliant notion to call in an outside force to fight on his behalf. This same brilliant notion has occurred to participants in civil wars uncounted times in history and it has ended in catastrophe just about every time, since those called in invariably take over for themselves. Of all history's lessons, this seems to be the plainest, and the most frequently ignored.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Man is a credulous animal, and...

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
In fact of course, this 'productive'...

In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Capital, p. 193.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
Liberty, as we all know, cannot...

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

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Chapter 1 (p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 5 days ago
I came to set fire to...

I came to set fire to the earth, and I wish it were already on fire!

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12:49 (CEV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Good nature is, of all moral...

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the purposes of poetry a...

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
And happiness is...
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Main Content / General
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 3 weeks ago
That a joint stock company should...

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 810.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 4 weeks ago
The most disadvantageous peace is better...

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

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Adagia, 1508
Philosophical Maxims
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