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9 months 2 weeks ago

It is soft, smooth and shining like intelligence. Its edges seem sharp but do not cut like justice. It hangs down to the ground like humility. When struck, it gives a clear, ringing sound like music. The strains in it are not hidden and add to its beauty like truthfulness.' What imagination! Confucius extolled Jade's virtues this way.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.

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On the Aegean Sea, in Ch. 2
7 months 3 weeks ago

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content.

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p. 213
5 months 4 days ago

No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical.

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In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Little I Remember (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95
4 months 3 weeks ago

I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

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Ch. 21 : Conclusion
6 months 1 week ago

A city that outdistances Man's walking powers is a trap for Man. It threatens to become a prison from which he cannot escape unless he has mechanical means of transport, the thoroughfares for carrying these, and the purchasing power for commanding the use of artificial means of communication.

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"Has Man's Metropolitan Environment Any Precedents?", Ekistics, vol. 22, no. 133 (December 1966) pp. 385-7
9 months 4 days ago

I will first discuss images according to the Law of Moses, and then according to the gospel. And I say at the outset that according to the Law of Moses no other images are forbidden than an image of God which one worships. A crucifix, on the other hand, or any other holy image is not forbidden. Heigh now! you breakers of images, I defy you to prove the opposite!

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pp. 85-86
5 months 5 days ago

I am aware that the great Plato himself, and after him, a man posterior to him in date, though not in mind, I mean Iamblichus of Chalcis (who initiated us into other branches of philosophy, and also into this by means of his discourses), did both of them as far as hypothesis goes, take for granted the fact of a Creation and assumed the universe to have been, in a certain sense, the Work of Time, in order that the most important of the effects produced by this Power, may be reduced into a shape for examination.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Simon Peter said to Him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

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9 months 5 days ago

For man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection: and they be three wisdoms of divers natures, which do often sever: wisdom of the behaviour, wisdom of business, and wisdom of state.

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Book II, xxiii
8 months 3 weeks ago

When I come to my own beliefs, I find myself quite unable to discern any purpose in the universe, and still more unable to wish to discern one.

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"Is There a God?", 1952
7 months 3 weeks ago

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature - this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

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Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children
7 months 1 week ago

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.

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9 months 3 weeks ago

To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

One may discover the root of a Hindoo religion in his own private history, when, in the silent intervals of the day or night, he does sometimes inflict on himself like austerities with a stern satisfaction.

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Snakes in the Ganga, 2022
9 months 3 weeks ago

It is difficult to set forth any of the greater ideas, except by the use of examples; for it would seem that each of us knows everything that he knows as if in a dream and then again, when he is as it were awake, knows nothing of it all.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know-it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

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9 months 4 days ago

There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works (Translation by William J. Cole) Vol. 10, p. 268
6 months 4 weeks ago

Nonviolence does not make sense without a commitment to equality. The reason why nonviolence requires a commitment to equality can best be understood by considering that in this world some lives are more clearly valued than others, and that this inequality implies that certain lives will be more tenaciously defended than others. If one opposes the violence done to human lives-or, indeed, to other living beings-this presumes that it is because those lives are valuable. Our opposition affirms those lives as valuable. If they were to be lost as a result of violence, that loss would be registered as a loss only because those lives were affirmed as having a living value, and that, in turn, means we regard those lives as worthy of grief.

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p. 28
8 months 3 weeks ago

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.

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"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'", in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589
8 months 1 week ago

It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 525
8 months 3 weeks ago

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment - a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 13, § 160
8 months 3 weeks ago

Skepticism is slow suicide.

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p. 240
7 months 1 week ago

I spoke after Sasha, for an hour. I discussed the farce of a government undertaking to carry democracy abroad by suppressing the last vestiges of it at home. I took up the contention of Judge Mayer that only such ideas are permissible as are "within the law." Thus he had instructed the jurymen when he had asked them if they were prejudiced against those who propagate unpopular ideas. I pointed out that there had never been an ideal, however humane and peaceful, which in its time had been considered "within the law." I named Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, Giordano Bruno. "Were they 'within the law"?" I asked. "And the men who set America free from British rule, the Jeffersons and the Patrick Henrys? The William Lloyd Garrisons, the John Browns, the David Thoreaus and Wendell Phillipses-were they within the law?"

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chapter 45
9 months 1 week ago

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.

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(20).
8 months 3 weeks ago

The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts.

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p. 39
9 months 1 week ago

No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

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Book I, ch. 15, 7.
8 months 2 weeks ago

Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.

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Freeman (1948), p. 151
7 months 3 weeks ago

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

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Vol. 3, Ch. IX, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks
8 months 3 weeks ago

In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.

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Art
7 months 2 weeks ago

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History.

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The First Part, Chapter 9, p. 40
7 months 1 week ago

I write to thee on this subject, friend, because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything.

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No. 66.
6 months 3 weeks ago

An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.

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Maxim 143
7 months 3 weeks ago

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), volume i, p. 273
7 months 1 week ago

He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it.Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.

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Ch. 11: "God", pp. 250-251
6 months 3 weeks ago

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

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Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable"
4 months 3 weeks ago

Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.

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(Hays translation) X, 37
8 months 3 weeks ago

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
6 months 3 weeks ago

The pre-atomist multisensory void was an animate, pulsating, and moving vibrant interval, neither container nor contained, acoustic space penetrated by tactility.

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p. 34

Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.

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