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7 months 2 weeks ago

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

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9 months 3 days ago

Only charity admitteth no excess. For so we see, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell.

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Book II, xxii
7 months 2 weeks ago

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.

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VIII, 50
2 months 3 weeks ago

"When a change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action necessary for that change is as small as possible."
- Pierre Louis Maupertuis

See biography for Pierre Louis Maupertuis:
https://civilsimian.com/Pierre-Louis-Maupertuis

Read Pierre Louis Maupertuis's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/390/content

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5 months 2 weeks ago

O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.

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Pt. I, Bk. V, ch. 5.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The regeneration of the inferior or bastard races by the superior ones is consistent with God's plans for humanity. The man of the people, in our countries, is always a fallen aristocrat; his hands are made to handle the sword rather than the laborer's tools. He prefers warring to working, that is, he returns to his original calling.

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93, as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), 147
8 months 3 weeks ago

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

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Works and Days
7 months 2 weeks ago

To covet truth is a very distinguished passion.

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p. 48
8 months 2 weeks ago

Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep.

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(Another translation: "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well." Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers R.D. Hicks, Ed.)
6 months 1 week ago

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

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The Battle of Naseby (1824), quoted in The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete, Vol. VIII, ed. Lady Trevelyan (1866), p. 551
7 months 2 weeks ago

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

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16:2-4 (KJV)
8 months 6 days ago

In this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605) Book II, xx, 8.

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

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Section 4
8 months 3 weeks ago

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. IV, sec. 23
8 months 3 weeks ago

What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.

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"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New, 1926

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

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Section 55
8 months 3 weeks ago

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

A man, Mr. Scrymgeour, may fall into a thousand perplexities, but if his heart be upright and his intelligence unclouded, he will issue from them all without dishonour.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the House with the Green Blinds.
5 months 3 days ago

Can anyone be proved innocent, if it be enough to have accused him?

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Julian, at the trial of Numerius, governor of Gallia Narbonensis, who was accused of embezzlement. Reported in Ammianus, Res gestae, bk. 18, ch. 1, sec. 4
8 months 3 weeks ago

People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

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Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 17 December, 1920
7 months 2 weeks ago

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

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7 months 1 week ago

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

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Philosophy of Logic
5 months 1 week ago

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

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As quoted in Life of John Stuart Mill (1954) by M. St.J. Packe, Bk. I, Ch. II
4 months 3 weeks ago

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

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6 months 1 week ago

It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (2 March 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 8
6 months 2 weeks ago

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

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9 months 2 weeks ago

In archery we have something like the way of the superior man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns round and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing to do at a time when the physicist believes he has at his disposal a rigid system of fundamental laws which are so well established that waves of doubt can't reach them; but it cannot be right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have become problematic as they are now. At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. In looking for an new foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.

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2 months 4 days ago

I don't know, I think this truth is mostly the exception...we're pretty hardcore these days..."Science shows no mercy!" 😁

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5 months 5 days ago

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

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1 month 4 weeks ago

There should be more dignity for those that need help. There's a stigma around needing charitable help people don't deserve.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Is not every man familiar with situations in his own life, when the needs of self-expression cannot be satisfied by saying any thing whatsoever times and occasions when, to make his fellows understand what he means, he must straight way do something, or be something, and perhaps hold his tongue the while? And can we deny that the same holds good of the Universe?

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2 months 1 week ago

Conservatives are strange people. Some guy went off on me about my interracial marriage. They are the danger they keep insisting we are. Weird people.

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9 months 3 days ago

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

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Of Studies
7 months 3 weeks ago

In a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interest of the immense majority in subjection to them. This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.

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5 months 1 week ago

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening.

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Line 5.
7 months 1 week ago

To all this, someone is sure to object that life ought to subject itself to reason, to which we will reply that nobody ought to do what he is unable to do, and life cannot subject itself to reason. "Ought, therefore can," some Kantian will retort. To which we shall demur: "Cannot, therefore ought not." And life cannot submit itself to reason, because the end of life is living and not understanding.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Money is a corporate image depending on society for its institutional status.

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(p. 133)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

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19:17 (KJV)
7 months 3 weeks ago

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
7 months 1 week ago

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.

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Chapter VI, Section 59, pg. 388

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