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6 months 2 weeks ago

The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows- gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid- crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations.

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p. 212
8 months 1 week ago

For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing.

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II, 18, 2 (see also Summa Theologica I, q. 45, art. 3 ad 2)
4 months 2 weeks ago

In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,-probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before.

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8 months 1 week ago

Thus intrigues and conspiracies do not arise, and thievery and robbery do not occur; therefore doors need never be locked.

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8 months 1 day ago

Tell your master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs, I would enter.

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Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (translated by Frederic H. Hedge), Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
3 weeks 1 day ago

Losing my 20/20 vision killed me....

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, -what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come -"As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; - for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, - I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them."

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Αs translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
8 months ago

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The bias of each medium of communication is far more distorting than the deliberate lie.

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JQ. Journalism quarterly, Volume 50, Association for Education in Journalism, 1973, p. 145
7 months 3 weeks ago

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete sceptics in religion...

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(p. 45)
7 months 3 weeks ago

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.

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Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
6 months 2 weeks ago

Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

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Section 9
7 months 2 weeks ago

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man-but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.

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p. 41e
7 months 3 weeks ago

Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.

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Maxim 459
8 months 3 weeks ago

But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.

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7 months 1 week ago

The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.

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Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88

I'm 53 now...my neighbor lives by herself at 101 (with visitors)....I'm thinking if you make it out of your late 70's you got a good genetic roll....

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded.By the most courageous resolve of my life am I reduced to this! what Power can save me from it, from myself?

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 24
4 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.

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

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Anarchy, in its own nature, is an evil of short duration. The more horrible are the mischiefs it inflicts, the more does it hasten to a close.

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Book 7, Ch. 5
8 months 3 weeks ago

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them, they are lost and friendship with them.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

All that is harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.

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IV, 23
6 months 6 days ago

The point I wish to make is that I became aware that we discipline our minds to see only certain aspects of the world; life is complicated, and we need all our wits about us to deal with its complexities. There would be no great point in having second sight or thaumaturgic powers for most of us. But it is worth observing that they can generally be developed where needed.

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p. 240
7 months 3 weeks ago

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

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4 months 4 days ago

Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

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Intellectual Yoga
6 months 1 week ago

And He is the God of the humble, for in the words of the Apostle, God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (I Cor. i. 27) And God is in each of us in the measure in which one feels Him and loves Him. "If of two men," says Kierkegaard, "one prays to the true God without sincerity of heart, and the other prays to the an idol with all the passion of an infinite yearning, it is the first who really prays to the idol, while the second really prays to God." It would be better to say that the true God is He to whom man truly prays and whom man truly desires. And there may even be a truer revelation in superstition itself than in theology.

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4 months 1 week ago

The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
7 months 3 weeks ago

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

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p. 219-220
4 months 1 week ago

These actions are not essentially difficult; it is we ourselves that are soft and flabby.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
6 months 2 weeks ago

Now, apparently, many men are again feeling homesick for the herd. They devote themselves passionately to whatever there is left in them of the sheep. They want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool, and the head down. This is the reason why so many European peoples are looking for a shepherd and a sheep dog.

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p. 170
7 months 3 weeks ago

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.

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Chap. I.
5 months 1 week ago

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

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p. 5
6 months 2 weeks ago

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

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Mysterium Coniunctionis, from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
6 months 2 weeks ago

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.

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Chapter 6 "Origins and Miracles" (p. 162)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path.

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Justice and Truth, no. 100
3 months 2 weeks ago

Conflicting intellectual positions may actually come to supplement one another. It is imperative in the present transitional period to make use of the intellectual twilight which dominates our epoch and in which all values and points of view appear in their genuine relativity. We must realize once and for all that the meanings which make up our world are simply an historically determined and continuously developing structure in which man develops, and are in no sense absolute.

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If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

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E 10
8 months 2 days ago

Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

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Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."
8 months 1 week ago

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.

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Book IV, ch. 1, 175.
3 months 2 weeks ago

If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

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VIII, 38
8 months 3 weeks ago

The majority of mankind and people who lack refinement conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they approve a life of sensual enjoyment.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

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Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding

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