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1 month 3 weeks ago

In reality, chivalry was animated by the impulse toward a 'traditional' restoration in the highest sense of the word, with the silent or explicit overcoming of the Christian religious spirit.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

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Attributed in The Life You Were Born to Live : Finding Your Life Purpose (1995) by Dan Millman, Pt. 2, Ch. 2 : Cooperation and Balance
4 months 2 weeks ago

This Being out of God cannot, by any means, be a limited, completed, and inert Being, since God himself is not such a dead Being, but, on the contrary, is Life; - but it can only be a Power, since only a Power is the true formal picture or Schema of Life. And indeed it can only be the Power of realising that which is contained in itself - a Schema.

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Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

"He who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted." (Matthew 23:12) The person who exalts himself ... will be humbled, because a person who considers himself to be good, intelligent, and kind will not even try to become better, smarter, kinder. The humble person will be exalted, because he considers himself bad and will try to become better, kinder, and more reasonable.

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p. 110
6 months 2 weeks ago

Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.

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Part One The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 187
4 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is indefensible - from the absurdest proposition to the most monstrous crime.

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4 months 1 day ago

An ethos of freedom stops power from solidifying into domination and makes sure it remains an open game.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

Neither will the horse be adjudged to be generous, that is sumptuously adorned, but the horse whose nature is illustrious; nor is the man worthy who possesses great wealth, but he whose soul is generous.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
4 months 2 weeks ago

If someone incessantly drops the word "life," you know he's a sick man.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.

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4 months 1 week ago

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 322.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth . . .

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4 months 3 weeks ago

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

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Chapter XIV.
5 months 1 week ago

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

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Lines 335-337; Edward Charles Wickham translation
5 months 3 weeks ago

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

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Act III, scene xi
5 months 2 weeks ago

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

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Letter to John Jay Chapman, 5 April 1897
2 months 2 weeks ago

Woman is degraded and made to believe that nature destined her exclusively to menial domestic labors, which in the combined order will be so abridged as to be performed without oppression to either sex.

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The Theory of Social Organization
4 months 2 weeks ago

Of all that makes us suffer, nothing - so much as disappointment - gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

It has been proved by the biological speculations of past time, that organic Life cannot rightly be resolved into mechanical or chemical forces, or the operation of a vital fluid, or of a soul.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.

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1 month 4 weeks ago

Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.

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6 months 6 days ago

All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.

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4 months 4 days ago

School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

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4 months 2 days ago

With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.

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Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
3 months 6 days ago

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.

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p. 231
4 months 1 week ago

Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lay down and rest.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

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Letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, often quoted as if in reference solely to the document the Declaration of Independence
5 months 2 weeks ago

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

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Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
5 months 2 weeks ago

What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.

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Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902
1 month 2 weeks ago

You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain.

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5 months 1 week ago

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 175
2 months 1 week ago

Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.

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Pt. I, Bk. VI, ch. 3.
2 months 3 weeks ago

The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk - and one that can potentially be overcome.

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"Unsorted Postings", pre-2014
5 months 2 weeks ago

In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

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Prudence
2 months 1 week ago

I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of those men's wits, that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments offered such violence to their own senses, as that they have been able to prefer that which their reason dictated to them, to that which sensible experiments represented most manifestly to the contrary. ...I cannot find any bounds for my admiration, how that reason was able in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape on their senses, as in despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.

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Thomas Salusbury translation (1661) p. 301 as quoted by Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science
5 months 3 weeks ago

The second is the partiality for unity proper to the philosophical mind, whence this wide-spread canon has flown forth: principles are not to be multiplied beyond supreme necessity, to which we give in our adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the world either by reason or experience, but as seeking it by an impulse of the intellect which seems to itself to have by thus much advanced in the explication of phenomena, by as much as it is granted to it to descend from the same principle to a greater number of consequences,

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The transition of the subject-object relation to that of the I-Thou implies a passage of consciousness to a new sphere of existence, viz, the interval, betweenness or Zwischen; and this is a passage from thought to Umfassung.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 73
1 month 2 weeks ago

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

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Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384
5 months 3 weeks ago

A man may be humble through vainglory.

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Ch. 17
5 months 1 week ago

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

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Stobaeus, iv. 32a. 19
5 months 1 week ago

When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 46, 69
4 months 2 weeks ago

In the present state of society it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted either by the words or conduct of men.

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Ch. 1, opening
1 month 2 weeks ago

Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.

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XII, 30
2 months 1 week ago

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

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Vol. II, Ch. II, p. 78.
4 months 4 days ago

Such words as spontaneity, sincerity, gratuitousness, richness, enrichment - words which imply an almost total indifference to contrasts of value - have come more often from their [the surrealists'] pens than words which contain a reference to good and evil. Moreover, this latter class of words has become degraded, especially those which refer to the good, as Valéry remarked some years ago. Words like virtue, nobility, honor, honesty, generosity, have become almost impossible to use or else they have acquired bastard meanings; language is no longer equipped for legitimately praising a man's character.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 168

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