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7 months 1 week ago

My body and my will are one.

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Book 1
6 months ago

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

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The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
6 months ago

I disclose my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries.

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7 months 1 week ago

And all the time - such is the tragi-comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more "drive", or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or "creativity". In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

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7 months 1 week ago

In a field of ripening corn I came to a place which had been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and as I glanced amongst the countless stalks, every one of them alike, standing there so erect and bearing the full weight of the ear, I saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and violet. How pretty they looked as they grew there so naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they are quite useless; they bear no fruit; they are mere weeds, suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of stalks. They are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life-so severe, but still useful and not without its fruit-play the same part as flowers in the corn.

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"Similes, Parables and Fables" Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 380A
7 months 1 week ago

My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.

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(p. 135)
7 months 1 week ago

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

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7 months 1 week ago

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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p. 216
5 months 6 days ago

At no period of human culture have men understood the psychic mechanism involved in invention and technology.

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(p. 300)
3 months 4 weeks ago

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.

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Bk. III, ch. 4.
5 months 1 week ago

It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.

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Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel
7 months 1 week ago

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 37
7 months 2 weeks ago

Saying is one thing, doing another.

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Book II, Ch. 31. Of Anger
5 months 3 weeks ago

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

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p. 274
6 months 1 week ago

Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.

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5 months 1 week ago

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

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Help for the Starving, Pt. III
7 months 1 week ago

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

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June 21, 1852
4 months 3 weeks ago

I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.

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Letter to Charles Kingsley
6 months 1 week ago

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

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Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
6 months ago

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

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8:34b-36 (KJV)
3 months 1 week ago

The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The Legislature, in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it.

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On the Louisiana Purchase, Letter to John Breckinridge
6 months 4 days ago

In our fear, we are victims of an aggression of the Future.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

If the church had deadly sins, the state has capital crimes; if the one had heretics, the other has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other criminal penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there inquisition and here - inquisition. Will the sanctity of the state not fall like the church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its 'subjects', will this remain? Will the 'saint's' face not be stripped of its adornment?

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Cambridge 1995, p. 211, 212
3 months 2 weeks ago

Love for distance and order, the ability to subordinate one's individualistic and passionate element to principles, the ability to take action and work above mere personhood, a feeling of dignity devoid of vanity are features of the true warrior spirit as essential as those which refer to actual combat.

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pp. 114-115
7 months 3 days ago
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Essence of Ground
5 months 1 week ago

History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.

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Epilogue II, ch. 1
7 months 2 weeks ago

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
6 months 6 days ago

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.

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Letter 12
6 months 2 weeks ago

Choose rather to be strong in soul than in body.

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"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904) Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body. As quoted in Florilegium, I.22, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 396
7 months 1 week ago

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

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Chapter X, Part I.
4 months 1 week ago

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

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p. 267
5 months 3 weeks ago

Hooks is a contentious writer, and I don't always agree with her contentions, but Ain't I a Woman has an intellectual vitality and daring that should set new standards for the discussion of race and sex.

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Ellen Willis in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
6 months 4 days ago

I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.

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Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby (1908) SS 80-81
7 months 2 weeks ago

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I. Variants: If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself. If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

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Ch. 28
4 months 2 days ago

Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science...

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The very elements themselves, though repugnant in their nature, yet, by a happy equilibrium, preserve eternal peace; and amid the discordancy of their constituent principles, cherish, by a friendly intercourse and coalition, an uninterrupted concord.

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7 months 1 week ago

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

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Second Thesis
6 months 2 weeks ago

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
4 months 2 days ago

If we study the history of science we see happen two inverse phenomena... Sometimes simplicity hides under complex appearances; sometimes it is the simplicity which is apparent, and which disguises extremely complicated realities....No doubt, if our means of investigation should become more and more penetrating, we should discover the simple under the complex, then the complex under the simple, then again the simple under the complex, and so on, without our being able to foresee what will be the last term. We must stop somewhere, and that science may be possible, we must stop when we have found simplicity. This is the only ground on which we can rear the edifice of our generalizations.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

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Part V : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § V : Destructionism, Ch. 33 : The Motive Powers of Destructionism, p. 440
3 months 3 weeks ago

Would you know what makes men greedy for the future? It is because no one has yet found himself.

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7 months 1 week ago

Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

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The Gioconda smile, in Mortal Coils, 1921
3 months 2 weeks ago

A political, economic, and social order created merely for the sake of temporal life is exclusively characteristic of the modern world, that is, of the antitraditional world.

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7 months 1 week ago

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

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Ch. 3: The Forms of Power
6 months 1 week ago

My poor opinion is, that the closest connexion between Great Britain and Ireland, is essential to the well being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two Kingdoms. ... I think indeed that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but, as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone Country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable Globe.

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Letter to an unknown correspondent (February 1797), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
7 months 1 week ago

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

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"The Test", as quoted in Emerson As A Poet (1883) by Joel Benton, p. 40
4 months 5 days ago

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 51
5 months 3 weeks ago

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.

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Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.

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