Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

The same good sense, that directs men in the ordinary occurrences of life, is not hearkened to in religious matters, which are supposed to be placed altogether above the cognizance of human reason.

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

The strangest mores of the most of-the-way societies will, in spite of everything, be relatively comprehensible to the person who has a flesh-and-blood knowledge of man's needs, anxieties, and hopes. If, on the other hand, this experience is lacking, he will not even be able to understand the customs of those about him.

Reality and history, however, are not dialectical, and no idealist rhetorical gymnastics can make them conform to the dialect.

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.

The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness. A statement of the author's "connection principle."

I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated;...

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.

To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error.

The wine is bottled poetry.

The mixture of children and men is precisely one of the most beautiful features of aristocratic government. All roles are distributed wisely in the world: that of the young is to do good, and that of old age is to prevent evil. The impetuosity of young men, who demand only action and creation, is very useful to the State; but they are too likely to innovate and destroy, and they would do much evil without the elderly, who are there to stop them. The latter in their turn oppose even useful reforms; they are too inflexible, they do not know how to accommodate themselves to circumstances, and sometimes a twenty-year old senator can very well be placed beside another of eighty.

A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

As our acts and our thoughts are, so will our lives be.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

If we allow them any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of evil, heresies and blasphemies.

But love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and a joy which is free from all sorrow. This is something greatly to be desired and to be sought with all our strength.

I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.

In a social order dominated by capitalist production even the non-capitalist producer is gripped by capitalist conceptions.

Above all things reverence thy Self.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you. Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.

The Age of Writing has passed. We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings.

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in poverty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps as himself, are responsible.

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

The Phoenicians who from their sagacity and learning possess great insight into things divine, hold the doctrine that this universally diffused radiance is a part of the "Soul of the Stars." This opinion is consistent with sound reason: if we consider the light that is without body, we shall perceive that of such light the source cannot be a body, but rather the simple action of a mind, which spreads itself by means of illumination as far as its proper seat; to which the middle region of the heavens is contiguous, from which place it shines forth with all its vigour and fills the heavenly orbs, illuminating at the same time the whole universe with its divine and pure radiance.

Of the truths within our reach... the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but... few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.

American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

It is impossible to pursue this nonsense any further.

I had been virtually a Unitarian (as I still am) but without knowing it. The experience of being among Unitarians who did know what they were, and attached much importance to it, was entirely novel to me, but I soon fell into their ways and found it easy to go forward on their road, the more so because the other roads became closed to me.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.

The Methods of Observation of Quantity in general, are 'Numeration', which is precise by the nature of Number; the 'Measurement of Space' and 'of Time', which are easily made precise; the 'Conversion of Space and Time', by which each aids the measurement of the other. The Idea of Space becomes more clear by studying 'Geometry'; the Idea of Force, by studying 'Mechanics'; the Ideas of Likeness, of Kind, of subordination of Classes, by studying 'Natural History'.

In short, analytic statements are statements which we all accept and for which we do not give reasons. This is what we mean when we say that they are true by 'implicit convention'. The problem is then to distinguish them from other statements that we accept, and do not give reasons for, in particular from the statements that we unreasonably accept. To resolve this difficulty, we have to point out some of the crucial distinguishing features of analytic statements (e.g. the fact that the subject concept is not a law-cluster concept), and we have to connect these features with what, in the preceding section, was called the 'rationale' of the analytic-synthetic distinction. Having done this, we can see that the acceptance of analytic statements is rational, even though there are no reasons (in the sense of' evidence') in connection with them.

When you move into a new area, a new territory and learn a new language, the language is not a new subject, it is an environment, it is total.

Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.