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3 months 3 weeks ago

On the whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was pleased to give me such a father; that from earliest years I had the example of a real man of God's own making continually before me? Let me learn of him. Let me write my books as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly through this shadow world; if God so will, to rejoin him at last. Amen.

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7 months 1 week ago

Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth.But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.

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First Book
7 months 6 days ago

There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere - no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.

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Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
6 months 6 days ago

Death is the most blessed dream.

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Act II.
3 months 3 weeks ago

To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.

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Seneca, On Anger (De Ira) 2.34.5 (translated by John W. Basore)
3 months 3 weeks ago

Alas, our noble men of genius, Heaven's real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by the wasteful time;-preappointed they everywhere, and assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise in Parliament," to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to be approved of by the gods!

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8 months 3 days ago

It is surely better to be wronged than to do wrong.

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7 months 6 days ago

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

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Worship
3 months 6 days ago

There are, in the Palætiological Sciences, two antagonist doctrines: 'Catastrophes' and 'Uniformity'. The doctrine of a 'uniform course of nature' is tenable only when we extend the notion of uniformity so far that it shall include catastrophes.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Books-there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book-that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.

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4 months ago

Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors - as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.

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3 months 6 days ago

One power descends and wants to scatter, to come to a standstill, to die. The other power ascends and strives for freedom, for immortality. These two armies, the dark and the light, the armies of life and of death, collide eternally.

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5 months 1 week ago

The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness. A statement of the author's "connection principle."

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"Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and Cognitive Science," The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 4 (December 1990): 585-696.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

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Tales of the Hasidim (1947), 1991 Ebook edition, p.251, as quoted in Jewish Currents.
5 months 2 days ago

Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth-floor window.

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The Genius of Charles Darwin
6 months 1 week ago

We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us.

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Section 44
5 months 2 weeks ago

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

In the world of action, we know that it is disastrous to treat animals or human beings as though they were stocks and stones. Why should we suppose this treatment to be any less mistaken in the world of ideas?

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p. 21.
7 months 2 weeks ago

It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

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Ch. 12
5 months 3 weeks ago

By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law.The need for punishment is not satisfied where, as is generally the case, the penal code is merely a method of exercising pressure through fear.

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p. 103

Probably more context is needed, and I don't disagree, but talk like this could lead someone to think that consequence is also relative or contingent...which is a dangerous and destructive indirect effect to leave unchecked.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries. Book 1; Befriending the Learned Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed.

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8 months 3 days ago

Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies.

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L 26
6 months 3 weeks ago

Rest gives relish to labour.

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Of the Training of Children, 9 (Tr. Babbitt)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Every rich man is avaricious, in my opinion.

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Ch. 14
3 months 6 days ago

Which of the two eternal roads shall I choose? Suddenly I know that my whole life hangs on this decision - the life of the entire Universe. Of the two, I choose the ascending path. Why? For no intelligible reason, without any certainty; I know how ineffectual the mind and all the small certainties of man can be in this moment of crisis. I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. "Upward! Upward! Upward!" my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The vanity of the passing world and love are the two fundamental and heart-penetrating notes of true poetry. And they are two notes of which neither can be sounded without causing the other to vibrate. The feeling of the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thing that triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fills life again and eternalizes it.

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3 months 6 days ago

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.

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"My Friend Poet. Mount Athos.", Ch. 19, p. 215
7 months 1 day ago

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.

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p. 50e
5 months 4 weeks ago

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

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19:26 (KJV)
5 months 6 days ago

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

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Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (October 12, 1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
5 months 2 weeks ago

I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man's capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy. I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create...

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8 months 1 week ago
Most men are too concerned with themselves to be malicious.
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3 months 6 days ago

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.

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Letter, Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821: ME 15-341
2 months 3 weeks ago

If I was not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.

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7 months 1 week ago

Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

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Vol II "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life"
7 months 1 week ago

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

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Sec. 107
7 months 2 weeks ago

Accustom him to every thing, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man.

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Ch. 26. Of the Education of Children, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
7 months 1 week ago

The offender never forgives.

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Émile et Sophie, ou Les Solitaires, "Lettre Première", 1781
7 months 2 weeks ago

And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, "If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it." That is, "After the devil himself, there is no worse folk than the pope and his followers."

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Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil
4 months 2 weeks ago

When Bernard Marx tells the Savage he will try to secure permission for him and his mother to visit the Other Place, John is initially pleased and excited. Echoing Miranda in The Tempest, he exclaims: "O brave new world that has such people in it." Heavy irony. Like innocent Miranda, he is eager to embrace a way of life he neither knows nor understands. And of course he comes unstuck. Yet if we swallow such fancy literary conceits, then ultimately the joke is on us. It is only funny in the sense there are "jokes" about Auschwitz. For it is Huxley who neither knows nor understands the glory of what lies ahead. A utopian society in which we are sublimely happy will be far better than we can presently imagine, not worse. And it is we, trapped in the emotional squalor of late-Darwinian antiquity, who neither know nor understand the lives of the god-like super-beings we are destined to become. "Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering", BLTC Research, 1998

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3 months 3 days ago

Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

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VII, 53
3 months 6 days ago

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

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7 months 1 week ago

I am sure, zeal or love for truth can never permit falsehood to be used in the defence of it.

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187
7 months 1 week ago

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

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5 months 4 days ago

The bible belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati.

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The Critic, Volume 33, Thomas More Association, 1974, p. 12

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