Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.

The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law; the small man thinks of favors which he may receive.

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

When you make the two into one, you will become children of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move from here!' it will move (106)

I have never definitely broken with Christianity nor renounced it. To attack it has never been my thought. No, from the time when there could be any question of the employment of my powers, I was firmly determined to employ them all to defend Christianity, or in any case to present it in its true form.

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.

Since it is every man's interest to be happy through the whole of life, it is the wisdom of every one to employ philosophy in the search of felicity without delay; and there cannot be a greater folly, than to be always beginning to live.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with reason when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. 5:22, King James Version.

Parnenides: When there is a number of things which seem to you to be great, you may think, as you look at them all, that there is one and the same idea in them, and hence you think the great is one. But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

Philosophers do not claim that God does not know particulars; they rather claim that He does not know them the way humans do. God knows particulars as their Creator whereas humans know them as a privileged creations of God might know them.

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

Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...

Wit is cultured insolence.

The machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.

Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.

Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. 26:34 (KJV) Said to Peter.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.

A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future.

Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. 26:26-29 (KJV)

A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.

Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do."

So watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him. (Luke 17:3-4) (NIV)

I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. 15:32 (KJV)

When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.

Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back.

The artist reconstructs the world to his plan.

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

It is only he, possessed of all sagely qualities that can exist under heaven, who shows himself quick in apprehension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intelligence, and all-embracing knowledge, fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous, generous, benign, and mild, fitted to exercise forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave, never swerving from the Mean, and correct, fitted to command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative, and searching, fitted to exercise discrimination. All-embracing is he and vast, deep and active as a fountain, sending forth in their due season his virtues. All-embracing and vast, he is like Heaven. Deep and active as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all reverence him; he speaks, and the people all believe him; he acts, and the people all are pleased with him.

Well, it was healthy to miss once in a while. It kept self-confidence balanced at a point safely short of arrogance.

According to your faith be it unto you. 9:29 (KJV) Said to the two blind men.

From the Christian point of view it stands firm that the truly Christian venturing requires probability.

The many are mean; only the few are noble.

Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.

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)

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 19:21 (KJV)

Moreover, there is a victory and defeat, the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeat, which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself; this shows that there is a war against ourselves going on within every one of us. Book I Sometimes paraphrased as "The first and best victory is to conquer self".

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.

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

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. Luke 11:23 (KJV)

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.