Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays hold on every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it shocked and disturbed by any contrariety. Hence the eagerness, which most people discover in a dispute; and hence their impatience of opposition, even in the most speculative and indifferent opinions.

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

Your data isn't just collected - it's weaponized. Every click, search, purchase builds profiles that predict and manipulate behavior. Surveillance capitalism doesn't just watch; it shapes. You think you're making free choices, but the environment of those choices has been algorithmically designed around your psychological profile.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling... Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from "being in love"-is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.

And yet this might not necessarily involve the conversion of the Trinity into a Quaternity. If... in Greek, spirit, instead of being neuter had been feminine, who can say that the Virgin Mary might not already have become an incarnation or humanization of the Holy Spirit? ...And thus a dogmatic evolution would have been effected parallel to that of the divinization of Jesus, the Son, and his identification with the Word.

True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.

Kant's philosophy shifts for the first time the whole of modern thought and being (Desein) into the clarity and transparency of the foundation (Begrundung). This determines every attitude toward knowledge since then, as well as the bounds (Abgrenzungen) and appraisals of the sciences in the nineteenth century up to the present time. Therein Kant towers so far above all who precede and follow that even those who reject him or go beyond him still remain entirely dependent upon him.

I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.

It seems that thought itself has a power for which it has never been given credit.

A man who for a long time has gone around hiding a secret becomes mentally deranged. At this point one would imagine that his secret would have to come out, but despite his derangement his soul still sticks to its hideout, and those around him become even more convinced that the false story he told to deceive them is the truth. He is healed of his insanity, knows everything that has gone on, and thereby perceives that nothing has been betrayed. Was this gratifying to him or not; he might wish to have disposed of his secret in his madness; it seems as if there were a fate which forced him to remain in his secret and would not let him go away from it. Or was it for the best, was there a guardian spirit who helped him keep his secret.

Eros conquers depression.

It is not only in literature that fiction generates immorality. It does it also in life itself. For the substance of our life is almost exclusively composed of fiction. We fictionalize our future, and, unless we are heroically devoted to truth, we fictionalize our past, refashioning it to our taste. We do not study other people; we invent what they are thinking, saying, and doing. Reality provides us with some raw material, just as novelists often take a theme from a news item, but we envelop it in a fog in which, as in all fiction, values are reversed, so that evil is attractive and good is tedious.

The day of your birth is one day's advance towards the grave.

I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.

It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.

Whoever shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death. (1) I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.

What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation.

The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,-to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend. With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,-and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,-that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth-that of Science-on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.

I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

Perdiccas threatened to put him to death unless he came to him, "That's nothing wonderful," Diogenes said, "for a beetle or a tarantula would do the same."

Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.

To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.

The same man who could not find it in his conscience to curb his curiosity into the nuclear studies that might someday kill half of Earth would risk his life to save that of an unimportant fellow man.

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through great connections and race; for in the end thy trust is on thine own deeds.

Truth is great and its effectiveness endures. 

Of all calumnies the worst is the one which attacks our indolence, which contests its authenticity.

Woman, compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him. The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman, has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The old often envy the young; when they do, they are apt to treat them cruelly.

Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.

Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'"

Since he is unable to be the beloved, he will become the lover.

Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep.

But since he has decided to have the impossibility of living, every misfortune is an opportunity which lays this importance of living before his eyes and obliges him to decide, once again, to die.

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

It is an article of faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a Virgin.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

For my part for one, though I make no doubt of preferring the antient Course, or almost any other to this vile chimera, and sick mans dream of Government yet I could not actively, or with a good heart, and clear conscience, go to the establishment of a monarchical despotism in the place of this system of Anarchy.