And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours.

Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.

Thought is something limitless and independent, and has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself. ... What was mingled with it would have prevented it from having power over anything in the way in which it does. ... For it is the finest of all things and the purest.

He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate, He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent, An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!

Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions.

Thus to the Lord doth Asha, the Truth, reply:"No guide is known who can shelter the world from woe, None who knows what moves and works Thy lofty plans."

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through great connections and race; for in the end thy trust is on thine own deeds.

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

With an ignorant man thou shouldst not become a confederate and associate.

A reflective, contented mind is the best possession.

Bear no improper envy, so that thy life may not become tasteless.

Hearken with your ears to these best counsels,Reflect upon them with illumined judgment.Let each one choose his creed with that freedom of choice each must have at great events.

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

Make thyself pure, 0 righteous man! Anyone in the world here below can win purity for himself, namely, when he cleanses himself with Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds.

With a foolish man make no dispute.

The resolute one who moved by the principles of Thy FaithExtends the prosperity of order to his neighbors And works the land the evil now hold desolate, Earns through Righteousness, the Blessed Recompense Thy Good Mind has promised in Thy Kingdom of Heaven.

Practice no sloth, so that the duty and good work, which it is necessary for thee to do, may not remain undone.

In the beginning there were two primal spirits,Twins spontaneously active,These are the Good and the Evil, in thought, and in word, and in deed.

Commit no slander; so that infamy and wickedness may not happen unto thee.

With a drunken man do not walk on the road.

A righteous government is of all the most to be wished for,Bearing of blessing and good fortune in the highest.Guided by the law of Truth, supported by dedication and zeal,It blossoms into the Best of Order, a Kingdom of Heaven!To effect this I shall work now and ever more.

Choose a wife who is of character, because that one is good who in the end is more respected.

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.

Form no covetous desire, so that the demon of greediness may not deceive thee, and the treasure of the world may not be tasteless to thee.

From an ill-natured man take no loan.

Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.

With a malicious man carry on no conflict, and do not molest him in any way whatever.

By Thy perfect Intelligence, O MazdaThou didst first create us having bodies and spiritual consciences,And by Thy Thought gave our selves the power of thought, word, and deed.Thus leaving us free to choose our faith at our own will.

Indulge in no wrathfulness, for a man when he indulges in wrath becomes then forgetful of his duty and good works . . . and sin and crime of every kind occur unto his mind, and until the subsiding of the wrath he is said to be just like Ahareman.

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.

In forming a store of good works thou shouldst be diligent, so that it may come to thy assistance among the spirits.

May we be those who shall heal this world.

With a greedy man thou shouldst not be a partner, and do not trust him with the leadership.

He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed,He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

Unto Thee, O Lord, the Soul of Creation cried: "For whom didst Thou create me, and who so fashioned me? Feuds and fury, violence and the insolence of might have oppressed me; None have I to protect me save Thee; Command for me then the blessings of a settled, peaceful life."

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through much treasure and wealth; for in the end it is necessary for thee to leave all.

I will now tell you who are assembled here the wise sayings of Mazda, the praises of Ahura and the hymns of the Good Spirit, the sublime truth which I see rising out of these flames. You shall therefore harken to the Soul of Nature. Contemplate the beams of fire with a most pious mind. Every one, both men and women, ought to-day to choose his creed. Ye offspring of renowned ancestors, awake to agree with us. So preached Zoroaster, the proph of the Parsis, in one of his earliest sermons nearly 3,500 years ago.

With an ill-famed man form no connection.

That is what is meant, I think by the allegation that it is good simply to be alive, even if one is undergoing terrible experiences. The situation is roughly this: There are elements which, if added to one's experience, make life better; there are other elements which, if added to one's experience, make life worse. But what remains when these are set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive. Therefore life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful, and the good ones too meager to outweigh the bad ones on their own. The additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself, rather than by any of its contents.

The organism does not have a point of view: the person or creature does.

Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence would come from the experience of bats, if we only knew what they were like.

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.

If things emerged from a spaceship which we could not be sure were machines or conscious beings, what we were wondering about would have an answer even if the things were so different from anything we were familiar with that we could never discover it. It would depend on whether there was something it was like to be them, not on whether behavioral similarities warranted our saying so. ... [W]e need ... to ask whether experience is present in [the] alien thing[s], ... whether there is something it is like to be them, and ... the answer to that question is what determines whether they are conscious.

I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type. It is often possible to take up a point of view other than one's own, so the comprehension of such facts is not limited to one's own case. There is a sense in which phenomenological facts are perfectly objective: one person can know or say of another what the quality of the other's experience is. They are subjective, however, in the sense that even this objective ascription of experience is possible only for someone sufficiently similar to the object of ascription to be able to adopt his point of view - to understand the ascription in the first person as well as in the third, so to speak. The more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the less success one can expect with this enterprise.

With regard to the rather common general distinction between good and bad sex ..., bad sex is generally better than none at all. This should not be controversial: it seems to hold for other important matters, like food, music, literature, and society. In the end, one must choose from among the available alternatives, whether their availability depends on the environment or on one's own constitution. And the alternatives have to be fairly grim before it becomes rational to opt for nothing.

Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.