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4 months 1 week ago

See a person's means (of getting things). Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character? See a person's "being", observe his motive, notice his result. How can a person conceal his character?

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2 months 3 weeks ago

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.

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Section 40
3 months 2 weeks ago

We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.

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Letter to M. de Grenonville, 1719
1 week 5 days ago

It is the sidereal day, that is, the duration of the rotation of the earth, which is the constant unit of time. ...However ...many astronomers ...think that the tides act as a check on our globe, and that the rotation of the earth is becoming slower and slower. Thus would be explained the apparent acceleration of the motion of the moon...

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2 months 1 week ago

Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

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15:3-9 (KJV)
2 months 1 week ago

They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

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9:12-13 (KJV)

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

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A 11
3 months 2 weeks ago

Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.

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"Miracles", 1764
2 months 2 weeks ago

Honour is the mysticism of legality.

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Aphorism 77, of Ideas as translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131
2 months 3 weeks ago

Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?

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Philonous to Hylas
3 months 2 weeks ago

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

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Uses of Great Men
3 months 1 week ago

To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.

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(p172)
3 months 2 weeks ago

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

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The Scientific Outlook (1931), Part I, chapter II, "Characteristics of the Scientific Method"
3 months 3 weeks ago

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

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IX
3 months 2 weeks ago

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes - the legal subordination of one sex to the other - is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

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Ch. 1
2 months 1 week ago

Every living creature is happy when he fulfills his destiny, that is, when he realizes himself, when he is being that which in truth he is. For this reason, Schlegel, inverting the relationship between pleasure and destiny, said, "We have a genius for what we like." Genius, man's superlative gift for doing something, always carries a look of supreme pleasure.

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pp. 16-17
1 month 2 weeks ago

To do two things at once is to do neither.

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1 month 1 week ago

Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the 'invisible hand' of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.

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"Stand up for the real meaning of freedom," The Spectator
3 months 2 weeks ago

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.

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p. 14
3 months 3 weeks ago

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

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Book I, Ch. 20
2 months 1 day ago

The effects of mescalin or LSD can be, in some respects, far more satisfying than those of alcohol. To begin with, they last longer; they also leave behind no hangover, and leave the mental faculties clear and unimpaired. They stimulate the faculties and produce the ideal ground for a peak experience.

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p. 88
2 months 1 week ago

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

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Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270
2 weeks 1 day ago

In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 52
2 months 2 weeks ago

We are accustomed to speak of ideas as reproduced, as passed from mind to mind, as similar or dissimilar to one another, and, in short, as if they were substantial things; nor can any reasonable objection be raised to such expressions. But taking the word "idea" in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness, it is clear that an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea. These two ideas are not present in the same state of consciousness, and therefore cannot possibly be compared.

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1 month 1 week ago

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

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Ch. 6
3 months 2 weeks ago

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

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In Memoriam E. B. E.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Let's not be dazzled by the sententious glitter with which error and lying often cover themselves. Society is not created by the crowd, and bodies come together in vain when hearts reject each other. The truly sociable man is more difficult in his relationships than others; those which consist only in false appearances cannot suit him. He prefers to live far from wicked men without thinking about them, than to see them and hate them. He prefers to flee his enemy rather than seek him out to harm him. A person who knows no other society than that of the heart will not seek his society in your circles. That is How J.J. must have thought and behaved before the conspiracy of which he is the object.

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Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
1 month 2 weeks ago

Although it is commonly supposed that war making is the specific activity of nations, the blind rage that motivates war destroys the very social bonds that make nations possible. Of course, it can fortify the nationalism of a nation, producing a provisional coherence bolstered by war and enmity, but it also erodes the social relations that make politics possible. The power of destruction unleashed by war breaks social ties and produces anger, revenge, and distrust ("embitterment") such that it becomes unclear whether reparation is possible, undermining not only those relations that may have been built in the past, but also the future possibility of peaceful coexistence.

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p. 154
3 months 2 weeks ago

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

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p. 182
3 months 2 weeks ago

All sources of energy upon which industry depends are wasted when they are employed; and industry is expending them at a continually increasing rate. Already coal has been largely replaced by oil, and oil is being used up so fast that East and West alike conceive it necessary to their own prosperity to destroy the industry of the other. And what is true of oil is equally true of other natural resources. Every day, many square miles of forest are turned into newspaper, but there is no known process by which newspaper can be turned into forest. You will say that this need not worry us, since newspapers will be replaced by radio, but radio requires electricity, electricity requires power, and power depends upon raw materials.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 4: The Limits of Human Power, p. 30
2 months 1 week ago

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

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"The Meaning of Life".
2 months 1 week ago

Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

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15:13-14 (KJV)
1 week 2 days ago

Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.

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Sec. 116
2 months 1 day ago

The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a great sin, that dares not face the light.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

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The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4
4 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge more than a Means. Also without this passion I refer to the passion for knowledge, science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an "ethos." Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanity suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their "scientific impulse" is their ennui.
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3 months 1 week ago

The gesture that divides madness is the constitutive one, not the science that grows up in the calm that returns after the division has been made.

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Preface to 1961 edition
2 months 3 weeks ago

That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Be kind. Don't kill for any reason. Don't even kill out of self-defense. Really - I mean that. Don't take any more than you need of anything. Help others.

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From a speech given on 20 January 1969 at the University of Michigan, about two months before Slaughterhouse Five was published
2 months 2 weeks ago

Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

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Chap. 11 (Psychotherapists or the Clergy), p. 229
3 months 2 weeks ago

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

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Book IV, Chapter VI, §2
4 months 2 weeks ago

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic - if it is pulled out I shall die.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Environments work us over and remake us. It is man who is the content of and the message of the media, which are extensions of himself. Electronic man must know the effects of the world he has made above all things.

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(p. 90)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Possibilities that fail to get realized are, for determinism, pure illusions: they never were possibilities at all. There is nothing inchoate, it says, about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall be actual having been from eternity virtually there. The cloud of alternatives our minds escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer deceptions, to which 'impossibilities' is the only name that rightfully belongs.

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The Dilemma of Determinism in "The Will to Believe" p. 151
1 month 3 weeks ago

Basic justice is based on everything we as humans share that is the same. It extends to nature also, but, if we can't keep it straight amongst ourselves, of course we'll never have the traction to extend it to the larger context we are a part of.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5

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