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2 months 4 days ago

The Master said, "Hard is it to deal with him, who will stuff himself with food the whole day, without applying his mind to anything good! Are there not gamesters and chess players? To be one of these would still be better than doing nothing at all.

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1 month 1 week ago

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

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Act 10, sc. 2

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

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Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to Mrs. Khoklakov
1 month 1 week ago

Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.

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p. 219
1 month 2 weeks ago

All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

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B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
1 month 4 days ago

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

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Book I, satire i, line 117

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

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Introductory Epistle
2 months 2 days ago

With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey.

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in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
2 weeks 1 day ago

We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it.

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p. 471
2 weeks 2 days ago

Your employer monitors keystrokes, tracks emails, watches screens, measures productivity down to seconds. Surveillance masquerades as optimization. They say it's efficiency; it's control. Digital panopticon in every workplace, turning workers into performance metrics constantly evaluated and found wanting.

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6 days ago

Classical science was based upon the belief that it is possible to formulate both the position and velocity at one time of any given particle. It followed that knowledge of the position and velocity of a given number of particles would enable the future behavior of the whole collection to be accurately predicted. The principle of Heisenberg is that given the determination of position, its velocity can be stated only as of a certain order of probability, while if its velocity is determined the correlative factor of position can be stated only as of a certain order of probability. Both cannot be determined at once, from which it follows necessarily that the future of the whole collection cannot possibly be foretold except in terms of some order of probability.

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Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
2 months 3 days ago

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

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1 month 4 days ago

To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.

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Line 309
2 months 4 days ago

When a man at forty is the object of dislike, he will always continue what he is.

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An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race, and who, before he could expose it, must himself have been its slave.

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p. 12
2 months 1 week ago

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

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1 month 3 weeks ago

The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

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Book I, v, 8
1 month 2 weeks ago

Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.

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Sec. 116

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

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Pt. IV, sec. 3, ch. 3
2 weeks 1 day ago

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

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No. 1
1 month 1 week ago

The only man for whom Hitler had "unqualified respect" was "Stalin the genius," and while in the case of Stalin and the Russian regime we do not... have the rich documentary material that is available for Germany, we nevertheless know since Khrushchev's speech before the Twentieth Party Congress that Stalin trusted only one man and that was Hitler.

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Part 3, Ch. 10
3 weeks 5 days ago

He is not rich, that enjoyeth not his own goods.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

It is true that in the confessional it is the pastor who preaches; but the true preacher is still the secret-sharer in your inner being. The pastor can preach only in vague generalities; the preacher in your inner being is just the opposite; he speaks simply and solely about you, to you, and within you.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky.

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1850
1 month 2 weeks ago

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.

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The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

But he, with these burthens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the History of India; and this in the course of about ten years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of reading and research. And to this is to be added, that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education.

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(p. 4)
1 month 3 weeks ago

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

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Ch. 27. Of Friendship
1 month 3 weeks ago

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

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Book I, Ch. 39
1 month 1 week ago

A just system must generate its own support.

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Chapter V, Section 41, p. 261
1 month 2 weeks ago

A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," - "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, - what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day."

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Works and Days
1 month 2 weeks ago

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

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Social Aims; sometimes condensed to "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."
2 weeks 5 days ago

The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.

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Chapter XIII.
2 weeks 5 days ago

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.

We must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond the grave. ...And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, in order that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it may be that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does not passionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Throughout your treatment you forget that you said that 'free-will' can do nothing without grace, and you prove that 'free-will' can do all things without grace! Your inferences and analogies "For if man has lost his freedom, and is forced to serve sin, and cannot will good, what conclusion can more justly be drawn concerning him, than that he sins and wills evil necessarily?

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p. 149
1 month 2 weeks ago

Just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.

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Ch. 18: The Taming of Power
1 week 3 days ago

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

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Letter to Fanny Bowditch, 22 October 1916
1 month 1 week ago

If someone is merely ahead of his time, it will catch up to him one day.

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p. 8e

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
2 weeks 1 day ago

Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.

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Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
2 weeks 1 day ago

Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 130
1 month 1 day ago

A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He answered, "In silence."

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33 Archelaus
1 month 2 weeks ago

We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.

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Section III, Chap. I.
2 weeks 5 days ago

A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers.

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Chapter IV
1 month 2 weeks ago

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

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Poetry and Imagination
1 week 3 days ago

The healthy man does not torture others-generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

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In Du, May 1941
1 week 3 days ago

It is only natural that I should constantly have revolved in my mind the question of the relationship of the symbolism of the unconscious to Christianity as well as to other religions. Not only do I leave the door open for the Christian message, but I consider it of central importance for Western man. It needs, however, to be seen in a new light, in accordance with the changes wrought by the contemporary spirit.

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Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

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Ch. 2, sect. 3

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