Skip to main content

There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
5 months 3 weeks ago

Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?

Hugo: No. 

Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.

Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

0
0
Source
source
Act 4, sc. 4
4 months 1 week ago

The human mind loves the bondage of words and is apt, when freed from one form of their tyranny, to set up another more oppressive than the last. The highest function of philosophy is to enforce the attitude of meditation and therewithal restrain the excessive volubility of the tongue. To us it seems that the reflective thinker wins his greatest victories when by what he says he compels us to recognise the relative insignificance of anything he can say. His task is not to capture Reality, but to free it from captivity.

0
0
8 months 4 weeks ago

Five rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

New technological environments are commonly cast in the molds of the preceding technology out of the sheer unawareness of their designers.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 47)
4 months 1 week ago

In the Koran as in the Bible, politics is divinized, and human reason, crushed by the religious ascendancy, cannot insinuate its isolating and corrosive poison into the mechanisms of government, so that citizens are believers whose loyalty is exalted to faith, and obedience to enthusiasm and fanaticism.

0
0
Source
source
p. 78
9 months 4 days ago

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. Variant translation: Now slavery has a certain likeness to death, hence it is also called civil death. For life is most evident in a thing's moving itself, while what can only be moved by another, seems to be as if dead. But it is manifest that a slave is not moved by himself, but only at his master's command.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 14
6 months 4 weeks ago

Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting - are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter Eight, The Outsider as a Visionary
4 months 3 weeks ago

I make known unto thee how He hath provided for the bodily health of us all, by having produced Æsculapius, the Preserver of the universe; and how he hath communicated to us virtue of every kind, by sending down Aphrodite in company with Athene for our guardian; having made it all but a law that no one should use copulation except for the end of generating his like. For this reason truly, according to his revolutions and seasons, do the various vegetable and animal races feel themselves stirred towards the generation of their kind. What need is there to magnify the glory of his rays, and of his light? A night without moon, and without stars, how terrible is it! Let anyone reflect on this, in order that he may estimate how great a blessing is the light we derive from the Sun!

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 120
4 months 2 weeks ago

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, - so good night!

0
0
Source
source
Letter to John Adams
8 months 2 weeks ago

We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, - considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.

0
0
Source
source
p. 491
8 months 2 weeks ago

In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Let us not violate the RIGHT of the artist to express exclusively his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything that happens in the world beyond. Let us not DEMAND of the artist, but - reproach, beg, urge and entice him - that we may be allowed to do. After all, only in part does he himself develop his talent; the greater part of it is blown into him at birth as a finished product, and the gift of talent imposes responsibility on his free will. Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.

0
0
9 months 2 weeks ago
Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.
0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so... They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?... I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from their own experience.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Mary Clarke Mohl (13 Dec 1861), published in Florence Nightingale on Women, Medicine, Midwifery and Prostitution: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2005), Volume 8, edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 84
4 months 2 weeks ago

To imply by the word "terrorism" that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of "terrorists" is misleading. The "legitimate" warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

It is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

0
0
Source
source
Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous", McSweeny's
8 months 2 weeks ago

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

The king Frederic has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.

0
0
Source
source
Reply to General Manstein. Voltaire writes to his niece Dennis, July 24, 1752, "Voilà le roi qui m'envoie son linge à blanchir"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.,1919
4 months 6 days ago

I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes; and that every person who retires from free communication with it is severely punished afterwards by the state of mind into which he gets, and which can only be prevented by feeding our sociable principles. I can speak from experience on this subject. From 1793 to 1797 I remained closely at home, saw none but those who came there, and at length became very sensible of the ill effect it had on my own mind, and of its direct and irresistible tendency to render me unfit for society and uneasy when necessarily engaged in it. I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then to see that it led to an anti-social and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it; and it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Maria Jefferson Eppes
2 months 3 weeks ago

In that missed necessity or worry about potential problems is uncontrolled stress and suffering.....also, whether you understand or not MONEY can solve this issue as well without understanding......

0
0
3 weeks ago

Certain rich people should remember the sheer numbers....

 


 

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

0
0
Source
source
"A Trip to Anhwei", in With Love And Irony (1940), p. 145
7 months 1 day ago

Bourgeois sport wants to differentiate itself strictly from play. Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 296
7 months 6 days ago

Without a strategic retreat into the self, without vigilant thought, human life is impossible. Call to mind all that mankind owes to certain great withdrawals into the self! It is no chance that all the great founders of religions preceded their apostolates by famous retreats. Buddha withdraws to the forest; Mahomet withdraws to his tent, and even there he withdraws from his tent by wrapping his head in his cloak; above all, Jesus goes apart into the desert for forty days.

0
0
Source
source
p. 35
9 months 2 weeks ago
What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him even concerning his own body in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.
0
0
9 months 1 week ago

Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.

0
0
Source
source
XII, 30
9 months 1 day ago

What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers.

0
0
Source
source
First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 266
6 months 4 weeks ago

Emptiness simply prevents what is individual from insisting on itself.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2 "Further Psychological Observations" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
4 months 2 weeks ago

The politicians have kept the environmental movement quiet by designating wilderness areas. And in the meantime, they've let corporations run completely out of control, and extraordinarily destructively, in the economic landscapes, without any acknowledgement at all that the natural world is out there just the same as it is in the parks.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.
6 months 1 week ago

Believe me, my friends, you are yet very deficient with regard to the best modes of training your children, or of arranging your domestic concerns.

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.

0
0
Source
source
p. 52.
8 months 3 weeks ago

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

0
0
Source
source
p. 270
7 months 6 days ago

The French symbolists had a special term to express their love for things that had lost their objective significance, namely, 'spleen.' The conscious, challenging arbitrariness in the choice of objects, its 'absurdity' and 'perverseness,' as if by a silent gesture discloses the irrationality of utilitarian logic, which it then slaps in the face in order to demonstrate its inadequacy with regard to human experience. And while making it conscious, by this shock, of the fact that it forgets the subject, the gesture simultaneously expresses the subject's sorrow over his inability to achieve an objective order. Twentieth-century society is not troubled by such inconsistencies. For it, meaning can be achieved in only one way-service for a purpose.

0
0
Source
source
p. 38.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia