Skip to main content
6 months 5 days ago

Man know thyself; then thou shalt know the Universe and God.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Fragments of Reality: Daily Entries of Lived Life (2006) by Peter Cajander, p. 109

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things. G 46 Variant translation: The inclination of people to consider small things as important has produced many great things.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, lovers of gain?

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

0
0
Source
source
Article on Government

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
6 months 3 weeks ago

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

0
0
Source
source
B 33
7 months 3 weeks ago

The best way to describe anyone is to give an example of the kind of thing he would do.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. For where a child has knowledge, he is no worse than we are.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, ch. 1, 16
5 months 2 weeks ago

Anxiety - or the fanaticism of the worst.

0
0
6 months 5 days ago

Use examples; that such as thou teachest may understand thee the better!

0
0
5 months 6 days ago

From that point, my universe went on crumbling; new cracks appeared all the time. I could see that the pleasant securities of childhood, all of those warm little human emotions, all of those trivial aims and purposes that we allow to rule our lives, were an illusion. We were like sheep munching grass, unaware that the butcher's lorry is already on its way. I got used to living with a deep, underlying feeling of uncertainty that no one around me seemed to share. It was rather like living on death row.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 12-13
7 months 1 week ago

Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude.

0
0
Source
source
De adulterinis coniugiis, 2, 16, in Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Reaction to Synod Door to communion for divorced & remarried officially kicked open, November 2nd, 2015

What the English call "comfortable" is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.

0
0
Source
source
S. Dyde, trans. (1896), § 191
7 months 1 week ago

When we have intelligence resulting from sincerity, this condition is to be ascribed to nature; when we have sincerity resulting from intelligence, this condition is to be ascribed to instruction. But given the sincerity, and there shall be the intelligence; given the intelligence, and there shall be the sincerity.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting."

0
0
Source
source
61 Cleomenes
4 months 2 weeks ago

Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement.

0
0
Source
source
"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 91)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It certainly contracts the world to village size and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumour, and personal malice.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 24)
3 months 1 week ago

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2 : On Youth
4 months 2 weeks ago

Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 170
6 months 3 weeks ago

First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Section 23, pg. 131
7 months 1 day ago

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

There are some simple maxims which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

0
0
Source
source
"How I Write", The Writer, September 1954
2 months 3 weeks ago

The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

0
0
Source
source
The Preacher
4 months 3 weeks ago

To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littré). Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary."

0
0
Source
source
"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 3
5 months 3 weeks ago

Not wise does it seem to attempt comprehending and understanding a Human World without full perfected Humanity. No talent must sleep; and if all are not alike active, all must be alert, and not oppressed and enervated. As we see a future Painter in the boy who fills every wall with sketches and variedly adds colour to figure; so we see a future Philosopher in him who restlessly traces and questions all natural things, pays heed to all, brings together whatever is remarkable, and rejoices when he has become master and possessor of a new phenomenon, of a new power and piece of knowledge.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all.

0
0
Source
source
"Thoughts on Lotteries", 1826
5 months 3 weeks ago

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

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 48, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151
3 months 2 weeks ago

I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
5 months 2 weeks ago

The assurance that we have no means of answering final questions is no valid excuse for callousness towards them. The more deeply should we feel, down to the roots of our being, their pressure and their sting. Whose hunger has ever been sated with the knowledge that he could not eat?

0
0
Source
source
p. 15
2 months 3 weeks ago

The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. the tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to José Correia da Serra
5 months 2 weeks ago

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Unrighteous fortune seldom spares the highest worth; no one with safety can long front so frequent perils. Whom calamity oft passes by she finds at last.

0
0
Source
source
lines 325-328; (Megara).
6 months 2 weeks ago

This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience.

0
0
Source
source
(p29)

In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally - in short, with reason.

0
0
Source
source
As translated by H. B. Nisbet, 1975
5 months 2 weeks ago

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.

0
0
Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 21, p. 112
5 months 2 weeks ago

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

0
0
Source
source
p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454
5 months 1 week ago

When I read the catechism of the Council of Trent, it seems as though I had nothing in common with the religion there set forth.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

This is the end of the web of the statesman activity: the direct interweaving of the characters of restrained and courageous men, when the kingly science has drawn them together by friendship and community of sentiment into a common life, and having perfected the most glorious and the best of all textures, clothes with it all the inhabitants of the state, both slaves and freemen, holds them together by this fabric, and omitting nothing which ought to belong to a happy state, rules and watches over them.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Start with a planet like the earth, with a complement of simple compounds bound to exist upon it, add the energy of a nearby sun, and you are bound to end with nucleic acids. You can't avoid it.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Savage - There is only one way fit for a man - Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.

0
0
Source
source
Pilgrim's Regress 100
3 months 4 days ago

If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

0
0
Source
source
p. 26 (This statement was redacted from later editions.)

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia