Skip to main content
2 months 3 weeks ago

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

0
0
Source
source
Fate
1 month 3 weeks ago

I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

This book is intended as a correlative history of the modern soul and of a new power to judge; a genealogy of the present scientifico-legal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications and rules, from which it extends its effects and by which it extends its effects and by which it masks its exorbitant singularity.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold, pp.42

To be content with life - or to live merrily, rather - all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

0
0
Source
source
K 29
1 month 3 weeks ago

Abolish competition and replace it with association.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

[B]ecause that which is finite is always bounded with reference to something... it is necessary that there should be no end... [N]umber also appears to be infinite, and mathematical magnitudes, and that which is beyond the heavens. And since that which is beyond is infinite, body also appears to be infinite, and it would seem that there are infinite worlds; for why is there rather void here than there? ...If also there is a vacuum, and an infinite place, it is necessary that there should be an infinite body: for in things which have a perpetual subsistence, capacity differs nothing from being. The speculation of the infinite is, however, attended with doubt: for many impossibilities happen both to those who do not admit that it has a subsistence, and to those who do. ...It is ...especially the province of a natural philosopher to consider if there be a sensible infinite magnitude.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

0
0
Source
source
p. 97
2 weeks 6 days ago

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

0
0
Source
source
Some More -isms, p. 32
2 months 4 weeks ago

To hold a pen is to be at war.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
1 month 1 day ago

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

0
0
Source
source
Definitions - Scholium
3 months 1 day ago

The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began..and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 481.
3 weeks 2 days ago

There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. ... They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill.

0
0
Source
source
An Apology for Idlers.
3 months 5 days ago

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.

0
0
1 month 6 days ago

Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated.

0
0
Source
source
p. 84.
3 weeks 4 days ago

The "tragic flaw" is not a detail of characterization, a mere "fly in the ointment", but a structural feature of ordinary consciousness.

0
0
Source
source
(p.45)
2 months 3 weeks ago

The believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture X, "Conversion, concluded"
3 months 2 weeks ago

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper.

0
0
Source
source
Estelle, refusing to use the word "dead", Act 1, sc. 5
2 months 4 weeks ago

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

0
0
Source
source
"The Flood", 1764
2 months 4 weeks ago

But capitalist production begets,with the inexorability of a law of Nature,its own negation. It is the negation of negation.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
3 months 1 week ago

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, ch. 16, 20.
1 month 1 week ago

The pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.

0
0
Source
source
"The Sovereignty of Ethics", in The North America Review, no. 262 (May-June 1878) p. 407
2 months 4 weeks ago

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Rachel Gleason Brooks, May 5, 1930
1 month 1 week ago

The Outsider may be an artist, but the artist is not necessarily an Outsider.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
1 month 2 weeks ago

Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the distinguishing mark of man, is a social product.

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 13 Variant: Of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our being. (Charles Cotton translation)
2 months 2 days ago

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.

0
0
Source
source
Encyclopédie
1 month 2 weeks ago

The wretched consciousness shrinks from it own annihilation, and just as an animal spirit newly severed from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the world and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs desire to possess another life than that of the world itself.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

One might think that it must be quite clear to people not deprived of reason, that violence breeds violence; that the only means of deliverance from violence lies in not taking part in it. This method, one would think, is quite obvious. It is evident that a great majority of men can be enslaved by a small minority only if the enslaved themselves take part in their own enslavement. If people are enslaved, it is only because they either fight violence with violence or participate in violence for their own personal profit. Those who neither struggle against violence nor take part in it can no more be enslaved than water can be cut. They can be robbed, prevented from moving about, wounded or killed, but they cannot be enslaved: that is, made to act against their own reasonable will.

0
0
Source
source
The Meaning of the Russian Revolution
1 month 2 weeks ago

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all commandments?" Jesus replied,"The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is like: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

0
0
Source
source
Mark 12:28-34
1 month 1 week ago

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.

0
0
Source
source
"Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine" as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
1 month 2 weeks ago

Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VIII: Ideal Society
1 month 1 week ago

God functions like a stabilizer of time.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IX, Section 83, p. 554
2 months 3 weeks ago

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 10
2 months 2 weeks ago

So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
2 months 3 weeks ago

What potent blood hath modest May!

0
0
Source
source
May-Day
2 months 2 weeks ago

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

But the exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches, follows. Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime to produce semen and excite the woman, and to frustrate her at that very moment.

0
0
Source
source
Luther's works Vol. 7 (1965), Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 38-44
3 months 2 weeks ago

Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 49)
1 month 2 weeks ago

He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.

0
0
Source
source
The Bell (1958) p. 91
1 month 2 weeks ago

Reason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not make either heroes or saints.

0
0
3 months ago

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

0
0
Source
source
A 727, B 755
1 month 3 weeks ago

Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Thought and Character of William James (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. II, ch. 91
3 months 2 weeks ago

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

0
0
Source
source
This is also from the 1965 essay by Justice Millard Caldwell. It is not clear if this is based in any specific dialogue.
1 month 1 week ago

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia