It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected.

The newspaper is a corporate symbolist poem, environmental and invisible, as poem.

Strength and beauty are the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.

A very weighty argument is this - namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering. Besides, we must pay attention to the other kinds of phenomena, both to the Intelligible, and yet more to the Sensible - whatever are connected with matter, or will manifest themselves in relation to our subject.

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.

When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is "inner" or "new." When speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called "sensual," "outward," or "old." Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day."

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

We are obviously heading for revolution-something I have never once doubted since 1850. The first act will include a by no means gratifying rehash of the stupidities of '48-'49. However, that's how world history runs its course, and one has to take it as one finds it.

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.

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."

He [Jesus] not only forbids actual uncleanness, but all irregular desires, upon pain of hell-fire; causeless divorces; swearing in conversation, as well as forswearing in judgment; revenge; retaliation; ostentation of charity, of devotion, and of fasting; repetitions in prayer, covetousness, worldly care, censoriousness: and on the other side commands loving our enemies, doing good to those that hate us, blessing those that curse us, praying for those that despitefully use us; patience and meekness under injuries, forgiveness, liberality, compassion: and closes all; his particular injunctions, with this general golden rule, Matt. VII. 12, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." And to show how much He is in earnest, and expects obedience to these laws, He tells them, Luke VI. 35, That if they obey, " great shall be their reward".

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.

Conduct, practice, is the proof of doctrine, theory. "If any man will do His will - the will of Him that sent me," said Jesus, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself" (John vii. 17); and there is a well known saying of Pascal: "Begin by taking holy water and you will end by becoming a believer." And pursuing a similar train of thought, Johann Jakob Moser, the pietist, was of the opinion that no atheist or naturalist had the right to regard the Christian religion as void of truth so long as he had not put it to the proof by keeping its precepts and commandments.

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old. Can Love be controlled by Advice?

I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.

What chance has Vulcan against Roberts & Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them.

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

If, then, in the sphere of action there is some one end which we desire for its own sake, and for the sake of which we desire every thing else; and if we do not choose every thing for the sake of something else, for this would go on without limit, and our desire would be idle and futile, it is clear that this must be the supreme good, and the best thing of all.

Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Critical social science attempts to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.

Don't hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son.

You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic.

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

Be gentle with them, Timothy. They want to be free, but they don't know how. Teach them. Reassure them.

Allow me, excellent Lucilius, to utter a still bolder word: if any goods could be greater than others, I should prefer those which seem harsh to those which are mild and alluring, and should pronounce them greater. For it is more of an accomplishment to break one's way through difficulties than to keep joy within bounds.

Every identity, such (third) critics say, even the multitude, must be defined by its remained, those outside of it, call them excluded, the abject, or the subaltern. ... There can certainly be points or nodes outside a network but none are necessarily outside. Its boundaries are indefinite and open. ... None is necessarily excluded but this inclusion is not guaranteed: the expansion of the common is a practical, political manner.

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

One must care about a world one will not see.

Look now, this is the starting point of philosophy: the recognition that different people have conflicting opinions, the rejection of mere opinion so that it comes to be viewed with mistrust, an investigation of opinion to determine whether it is rightly held, and the discovery of a standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have devised for the determining of weights, or the carpenter's rule for determining whether things are straight or crooked.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.

Why, what is weeping and sighing? A judgement. What is misfortune? A judgement. What are strife, disagreement, fault-finding, accusing, impiety, foolishness? They are all judgements.

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.

It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true.