Skip to main content
1 month 1 day ago

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

0
0
Source
source
5:1 12 (NIV) Often referred to as "The Beatitudes" this is the start of "The Sermon on the Mount".
2 months 4 days ago

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.

0
0
Source
source
p. 98e
2 months 4 days ago

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

0
0
Source
source
p. 39e
1 month 1 week ago

I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

0
0
Source
source
Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 170

By surpassing writing, we have regained our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.

0
0
3 weeks 5 days ago

The wretched consciousness shrinks from it own annihilation, and just as an animal spirit newly severed from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the world and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs desire to possess another life than that of the world itself.

0
0
1 week 1 day ago

The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is only by various cunning devices that we have been postponing the crisis... The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves.

0
0
Source
source
What is to be Done (1899) p. 262
3 weeks 1 day ago

As man loses touch with his 'inner being', his instinctive depths, he finds himself trapped in the world of consciousness, that is to say, in the world of other people. Any poet knows this truth; when other people sicken him, he turns to hidden resources of power inside himself, and he knows then that other people don't matter a damn. He knows the 'secret life' inside him is the reality; other people are mere shadows in comparison. but the 'shadows' themselves cling to one another. 'Man is a political animal', said Aristotle, telling one of the greatest lies in human history. Man has more in common with the hills, or with the stars, than with other men.

0
0
Source
source
p. 170
1 month 4 weeks ago

Count all wickedness foreign and alien.

0
0
Source
source
§ 5

We are swiftly moving at present from an era where business was our culture into an era when culture will be our business. Between these poles stand the huge and ambiguous entertainment industries.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 384)
3 months 5 days ago

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

0
0
1 month 6 days ago

Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she more disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By his scheme of naked virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer willl more fully do her justice, while vice, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to glow her actions of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.

0
0
Source
source
Book V, Chapter 12, "Of Titles"
2 months 1 week ago

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity. 

0
0
Source
source
Variant translations: Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity. Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
2 months 1 week ago

it is absurd ... to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass

0
0
Source
source
("Dialectic of Teleological Judgment" §75)

To have no food for our heads no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how do we cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the Times, Death of Thought from Starvation, or Death of Moral Activity from Starvation, how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! One would think we had no heads nor hearts, by the total indifference of the public towards them. Our bodies are the only things of any consequence.

0
0
2 months 4 days ago

The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

0
0
Source
source
(3) Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
2 months 1 week ago

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

0
0
Source
source
Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters
1 month 5 days ago

Love of the absolute engenders a predilection for self-destruction. Hence the passion for monasteries and brothels. Cells and women, in both cases. Weariness with life fares well in the shadow of whores and saintly women.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter V, Section 48, p. 310
3 months 1 week ago

[T]he first philosophers, in investigating the truth and the nature of things, wandered, as if led by ignorance, into a certain... path. Hence, they say that no being is either generated or corrupted, because it is necessary that what is generated should be generated either from being or non-being: but both these are impossible; for neither can being be generated, since it already is; and from nothing, nothing can be generated... And thus... they said that there were not many things, but that being alone had a subsistence. ...the ancient philosophers ...through this ignorance added so much to their want of knowledge, as to fancy that nothing else was generated or had a being; but they subverted all generation.

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

The history of the Romanovs is an Elizabethan tragedy that lasts for three centuries. Its keynote is cruelty, a barbaric, pointless kind of cruelty that has always been common in the East, but that came to Europe only recently, in the time of Hitler.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 61-62
2 months 3 days ago

This aristocratic thesis is... the demos, the people, are the most numerous... also comprised of the most ordinary, and... even the worst, citizens. Therefore... what is best for the demos cannot be what is best for the polis... the city.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 52
2 months 1 week ago

"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7 : The Pendragon, section 2
3 weeks 5 days ago

And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of appearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is overcome and liberty is law.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.

0
0
Source
source
from Horace, Epistles I.xviii.76
3 weeks 4 days ago

Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.

0
0
Source
source
p. 123
2 months 3 weeks ago

Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail;Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,Newer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.

0
0
Source
source
Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)
1 week 4 days ago

During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

0
0
Source
source
Vonnegut at 80 Interview with David Hoppe Alternet
2 months 1 week ago

With what consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretence of authority, or claim upon them?

0
0
1 month 6 days ago

It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.

0
0
Source
source
Letter 22
2 weeks 6 days ago

In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.

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

I shall not have it judged by any man, not even by any angel. For since I am certain of it, I shall be your judge and even the angels' judge through this teaching (as St. Paul says [1 Cor. 6:3]) so that whoever does not accept my teaching may not be saved - for it is God's teaching and not mine.

0
0
Source
source
Against the Spiritual Estate of the Pope and the Bishops Falsely So Called, July 1522. Luther's Works, Church and Ministry I, Eric W. Gritsch, Helmut T. Lehman eds., Concordia Publishing House, 1986, ISBN 0800603397, ISBN 9780800603397, vol. 39, p. 249.
2 months 1 week ago

The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 115
1 month 1 day ago

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

0
0
Source
source
The Phoenix, a Linguistic Phenomenon, ch. 1
2 months 3 days ago

We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot 'see' how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.

0
0
Source
source
Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
2 months 2 weeks ago

You venerate the saints, and you take pleasure in touching their relics. But you disregard their greatest legacy, the example of a blameless life. No devotion is more pleasing to Mary than the imitation of Mary's humility. No devotion is more acceptable and proper to the saints than striving to imitate their virtues.

0
0
Source
source
The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 144.
1 month 1 day ago

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all commandments?" Jesus replied,"The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is like: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

0
0
Source
source
Mark 12:28-34
3 weeks 1 day ago

Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity.

0
0
1 week 1 day ago

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God-given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense.

0
0
Source
source
III
2 months 1 week ago

No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 311.
2 months 2 weeks ago

It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12
1 month 1 week 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?

0
0
Source
source
Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 24
1 month 5 days ago

The assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition. But... there could just as well be layers lying above consciousness... The conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backward with the physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditioned partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.

0
0
Source
source
p. 132
1 month 6 days ago

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

0
0
Source
source
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
2 months 3 weeks ago

When I see someone in anxiety, I say to myself, What can it be that this fellow wants? For if he did not want something that was outside of his control, how could he still remain in anxiety?

0
0
Source
source
Book II, ch. 13, 1.
2 months 1 week ago

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

0
0
Source
source
Estelle, discovering that there are no mirrors in Hell, Act 1, sc. 5
1 week 4 days ago

It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.

0
0
Source
source
P. 5.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia