Skip to main content
1 month 3 weeks ago

I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 186)
1 month 3 weeks ago

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) by J. R. Newman, p. 1832
1 week 6 days ago

Non-operational ideas are non-behavioral and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14
1 month 2 weeks ago

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

0
0
Source
source
Act 2, sc. 3

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

0
0
Source
source
J 10
1 week 6 days ago

All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.

0
0
Source
source
"Materialism and Idealism" p. 175 (Hathi Trust)
1 month 1 week ago

Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
2 months 3 weeks ago
The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the same good things for the first time several times.
0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

Faith looks to the word and the promise; that is, to the truth. But hope looks to that which the word has promised, to the gift.

0
0
Source
source
p. 221
3 weeks ago

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Government has no other end than the preservation of property.

0
0
Source
source
Second Treatise of Government, Ch. VII. sec. 94
2 weeks 3 days ago

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticizes it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is coterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
2 months ago

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

0
0
Source
source
De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, "Fortitudo"
1 month 1 week ago

The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88
2 months 1 week ago

The way of the superior man may be found, in its simple elements, in the intercourse of common men and women; but in its utmost reaches, it shines brightly through Heaven and Earth.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
3 days ago

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena?

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...

0
0
6 days ago

The respect inspired by the link between man and the reality alien to this world can make itself evident to that part of man which belongs to the reality of this world. The reality of this world is necessity. The part of man which is in this world is the part which is in bondage to necessity and subject to the misery of need. The one possibility of indirect expression of respect for the human being is offered by men's needs, the needs of the soul and of the body, in this world.

0
0
1 month 2 days ago

If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.
2 months 1 week ago

I am not my soul.

0
0
Source
source
Super I ad Corinthios, 15.2
1 week 4 days ago

Every living creature is happy when he fulfills his destiny, that is, when he realizes himself, when he is being that which in truth he is. For this reason, Schlegel, inverting the relationship between pleasure and destiny, said, "We have a genius for what we like." Genius, man's superlative gift for doing something, always carries a look of supreme pleasure.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 16-17
1 week 6 days ago

The methods of logical procedure are very different in ancient and modem logic, but behind all difference is the construction of a universally valid order of thought, neutral with respect to material content. Long before technological man and technological nature emerged as the objects of rational control and calculation, the mind was made susceptible to abstract generalization. Terms which could be organized into a coherent logical system, free from contradiction or with manageable contradiction, were separated from those which could not. Distinction was made between the universal, calculable, "objective" and the particular, incalculable, subjective dimension of thought.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 137-138
3 days ago

Motherhood in the true sense should embrace all children. Because so few realize this truth, child life is so empty of warmth, of love, of color, and beauty. A home-what is it to-day but a cage from which most of its inhabitants wish to escape? No, I should never have found happiness in such a place. My ideals, the struggle for them, and whatever hardships and suffering they have brought, far from wasting my life, have enriched it a thousandfold. To me it has been a grand adventure which I should not have missed for all the wealth in the world.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

0
0
2 weeks 3 days ago

This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (13 March 1884); published in the The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine as The Dilemma of Determinism
2 weeks 3 days ago

Eros is a superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent. But triumph over nature is dearly paid for. Nature requires no explanations of principle, but asks only for tolerance and wise measure. "Eros is a mighty daemon," as the wise Diotima said to Socrates. We shall never get the better of him, or only to our own hurt. He is not the whole of our inward nature, though he is at least one of its essential aspects.

0
0
Source
source
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" P.32f

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
3 weeks 1 day ago

Eviction is poverty's engine. You lose housing, then jobs, then children, then hope. Evictions concentrate in poor Black neighborhoods, devastate communities, enrich landlords. The eviction machine churns through lives, destroying stability while extracting maximum rent. Homelessness is profitable for property owners.

0
0

...Zen Buddhism, this religion of immanence.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.

0
0
Source
source
"The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society" p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader
1 month 2 weeks ago

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

0
0
Source
source
A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
3 weeks ago

It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the 'accumulations of ignorance and superstition', that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But these are donations made in 'ages of ignorance and superstition'. Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription; and this gives right and title.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 95
1 month 3 weeks ago

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

0
0
Source
source
"Sixième discours: sur la nature de l'homme," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738
1 month 2 weeks ago

Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"
2 weeks 2 days ago

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, butstirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.

0
0
Source
source
p. 320
2 weeks 3 days ago

Aion is a child at play, gambling; a child's is the kingship. Telesphorus traverses the dark places of the world, like a star flashing from the deep, leading the way to the gates of the sun and the land of dreams.

0
0
Source
source
Combining fragments of Heraclitus and Homer
1 week 5 days ago

The other conclusion is that art is the complement of science. Science as I have said is concerned wholly with relations, not with individuals. Art, on the other hand, is not only the disclosure of the individuality of the artist but also a manifestation of individuality as creative of the future, in an unprecedented response to conditions as they were in the past. Some artists in their vision of what might be, but is not, have been conscious rebels. But conscious protest and revolt is not the form which the labor of the artist in creation of the future must necessarily take. Discontent with things as they are is normally the expression of the vision of what may be and is not, art in being the manifestation of individuality is this prophetic vision.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

But perhaps I lack the gift. I see I've described her as being like a sword. That's true as far as it goes. But utterly inadequate by itself, and misleading. I ought to have said 'But also like a garden. Like a nest of gardens, wall within wall, hedge within hedge, more secret, more full of fragrant and fertile life, the further you explore.' And then, of her, and every created thing I praise, I should say 'in some way, in its unique way, like Him who made it.' Thus up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. to the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful.

0
0

Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

0
0
Source
source
Book VI, Chapter 3: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima
1 month 3 weeks ago

Do not most of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having come upon some young officers debauching some girls, said to them angrily: "Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?" "Character"

0
0
Source
source
1764

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

0
0
Source
source
Act II.
6 days ago

A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license.

0
0
Source
source
Devil disguised. p. 122
1 month 3 weeks ago

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 4, The World As Will: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958) p. 322
1 month 3 weeks ago

At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935)
1 week ago

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

0
0
Source
source
See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia