Skip to main content
7 months 1 day ago

Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present. After all, we know perfectly well that the past is as real as the present, and that New York and Singapore and Lhasa and Stepney Green are all as real as the place I happen to be in at the moment. Yet my senses do not agree. They assure me that this place, here and now, is far more real than any other place or any other time. Only in certain moments of great inner intensity do I know this to be a lie. Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it - fragmentary and uncertain though it is - that distinguishes man from all other animals.

0
0
Source
source
p. 59
7 months 1 week ago

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

0
0
Source
source
An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), translated by T. E. Hulme. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, p. 44
8 months 2 weeks ago

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.

0
0
Source
source
p. 215
7 months 2 weeks ago

The more one is obsessed with God, the less one is innocent. Nobody bothered about him in paradise. The fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Now the maximum of perfection is called ideal, by Plato, Idea - for instance, his Idea of a Republic - and is the principle of all that is contained under the general notion of any perfection, inasmuch as the lesser grades are not thought determinable but by limiting the maximum. But God, the Ideal of perfection, and hence the principle of cognition, is also, as existing really, the principle of the creation of all perfection.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.

0
0
Source
source
Foreword to the English edition
7 months 3 days ago

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.

0
0
Source
source
p. 360.
8 months 2 weeks ago

Every commodity is compelled to chose some other commodity for its equivalent.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 3, pg. 65.
7 months 2 weeks ago

For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

All repressed passion produces its counter-passion which is as malevolent as the natural passion would be beneficial.

0
0
Source
source
Le nouveau monde amoureux
7 months 2 weeks ago

To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

These principles it is necessary strictly to attend to, because they will serve much to explain the whole course both of government and real property, wherever the German nations obtained a settlement; the whole of their government depending for the most part upon two principles in our nature,-ambition, that makes one man desirous, at any hazard or expense, of taking the lead amongst others; and admiration, which makes others equally desirous of following him from the mere pleasure of admiration, and a sort of secondary ambition, one of the most universal passions among men. These two principles, strong both of them in our nature, create a voluntary inequality and dependence.

0
0
Source
source
An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 282
8 months 1 week ago

Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul.

0
0
Source
source
(p19)
4 months 2 weeks ago

We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life - it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Albert Schweitzer : The Man and His Mind (1947) by George Seaver, p. 366
7 months 2 weeks ago

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

0
0
Source
source
Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
8 months 1 week ago

A life without a holiday is like a long journey without an inn to rest at.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.

0
0
Source
source
P.245

I've got mixed feelings about this...maybe for some people it's good advice. In this age the public is driven by mis and disinformation, so, that part's not relevant anymore....

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Complete, at the same time, was his confidence in his own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was one of those few that could believe and know as well as inquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it himself, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit of the genuine man.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace... we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Chapter 11, "Faith"
8 months 3 weeks ago

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, xxi, 9
6 months 2 weeks ago

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end. First Thesis Variant translations: All natural capacities of a creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end. All natural capacities of a creature are destined to develop themselves completely and to their purpose.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
8 months 2 days ago

A transition, therefore, is not undeservedly made from sense to consideration, and from this to the nobler energies of intellect. Hence, as the certain knowledge of numbers received its origin among the Phœnicians, on account of merchandise and commerce, so geometry was found out among the Egyptians from the distribution of land. When Thales, therefore, first went into Egypt, he transferred this knowledge from thence into Greece: and he invented many things himself, and communicated to his successors the principles of many. Some of which were, indeed, more universal, but others extended to sensibles.

0
0
Source
source
Chap. IV.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
7 months 4 days ago

The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?"

0
0
Source
source
Letter to her parents (1943), as quoted in the Introduction by Siân Miles p. 2
8 months 3 weeks ago

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

0
0
Source
source
Rules for the Direction of the Mind: X.379 As quoted in Clarke, Desmond M. (2006). Descartes : a Biography. Cambridge Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-521-82301-2.
5 months 3 days ago

Mucius put his hand into the fire. It is painful to be burned; but how much more painful to inflict such suffering upon oneself!

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

0
0
Source
source
Prayer, inscribed on the bronze memorial to Stevenson in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland
9 months 2 weeks ago

Parnenides: When there is a number of things which seem to you to be great, you may think, as you look at them all, that there is one and the same idea in them, and hence you think the great is one. But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.

0
0
Source
source
Act 1
7 months 3 weeks ago

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 5
9 months 2 weeks ago

Lord Jesus Christ, the birds had nests, the foxes had dens, and you had no place where you could lay your head. You were homeless in the world-yet you yourself were a hiding place, the only place where the sinner could flee. And so even this very day you are a hiding place. When the sinner flees to you, hides himself with you, is hidden in you, he is eternally kept safe, since love hides a multitude of sins.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

0
0
Source
source
Preface, Dover abridged edition (1952), p. xxii
4 months 4 weeks ago

Mussolini is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin...

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 451.
7 months 4 days ago

I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

0
0
Source
source
As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
6 months 2 weeks ago

By electricity we have not been driven out of our senses so much as our senses have been driven out of us.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 375)
8 months 3 weeks ago

What alone has value is the use to which life is put and the end to which it is directed. The value of life has to be created by man, it cannot be obtained through luck but only through wisdom. He who is anxiously concerned over losing his life will never enjoy life.

0
0
Source
source
Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 141
7 months 5 days ago

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty of the truth of what I hope for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no security or repose - so far as security and repose are obtainable in this life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful - save in conduct that is passionately good.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 312

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia