Skip to main content
1 month 2 weeks ago

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

0
0
3 weeks 5 days 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
2 weeks 4 days ago

Of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do. He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments were anything unusual at my age.

0
0
1 week 6 days ago

Our elucidations of the preliminary concept of phenomenology show that its essential character does not consist in its actuality as a philosophical "movement." Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology solely by seizing upon it as a possibility.

0
0
2 weeks 3 days ago

Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling. Vertue - I know that a rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe - the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

0
0
2 weeks 6 days ago

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

0
0
1 week 1 day ago

All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born.

0
0
3 weeks 5 days ago

His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work. Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men's eyes.

0
0
1 week 6 days ago

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

0
0
2 weeks 5 days ago

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

Most Christians are superstitious rather than pious, and except for the name of Christ differ hardly at all from superstitious pagans.

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

There is nothing in any object, consider'd in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; [...] even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.

0
0

In Mohammedanism the narrow principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as in the Far East, regarded as existent in an immediately sensory way but is conceived as the one infinite power elevated above all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, the religion of sublimity.

0
0
2 weeks 3 days ago

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

It is characteristic of the most entire sincerity to be able to foreknow. When a nation or family is about to flourish, there are sure to be happy omens; and when it is about to perish, there are sure to be unlucky omens.

0
0
1 month 2 days ago

The living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Speaking with sense we must fortify ourselves in the common sense of all, as a city is fortified by its law, and even more forcefully. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it will and suffices for all and is superabundant.

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end.

0
0
2 weeks 5 days ago

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous .... Photography ... offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

It is love that leniently and mercifully says: I forgive you everything-if you are forgiven only little, then it is because you love only little. Justice severely sets the boundary and says: No further! This is the limit. For you there is no forgiveness, and there is nothing more to be said.

0
0
2 weeks 5 days ago

I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon, at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mère. I know nothing of the mother of Attila, but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.

0
0
2 weeks 6 days ago

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

The military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, - mettle and bottom.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

[T]he kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. 18:23

0
0
1 month 2 days ago

When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it; for, if you don't act right, shun the action itself; but, if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly?

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.

0
0
2 weeks 6 days ago

I doubt not but one great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports, and trifle away all their time insipidly, is, because they have found their curiosity baulk'd, and their inquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and respect, and their questions answered, as they should, to their satisfaction; I doubt not but that they would have taken more pleasure in learning, and improving their knowledge, wherein there would still be newness and variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same play and play-things.

0
0
1 week 6 days ago

We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

0
0
1 week 1 day ago

Unto Thee, O Lord, the Soul of Creation cried:"For whom didst Thou create me, and who so fashioned me?Feuds and fury, violence and the insolence of might have oppressed me; None have I to protect me save Thee;Command for me then the blessings of a settled, peaceful life."

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

Titles of property, for instance railway shares, may change hands every day, and their owner may make a profit by their sale even in foreign countries, so that titles to property are exportable, although the railway itself is not.

0
0
5 days ago

Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!"

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Have no fear, little flock, for your Father has approved of giving you the Kingdom. 12:32

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

0
0
1 month 3 days ago

On Ps 60:3: To Thee have I cried from the ends of the earth.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia