If... it be supposed that another way of measuring time is adopted... enunciation of the law would be... translated into another language... much less simple. So that the definition implicitly adopted by the astronomers may be summed up..: Time should be so defined that the equations of mechanics may be as simple as possible... [i.e.,] there is not one way of measuring time more true... only more convenient.

You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.

Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however,consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.

All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while-only so long as they are eating and drinking-but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.

All savageness is a sign of weakness.

You can't satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.

Of corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter-the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

War is sweet to them that know it not.

Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.

Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness - this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.

The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one whould have liked to pair up a sister soul, from whom one would have substitution and sacrifice.

How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another?

In refusing to face evil, Sinclair has gained nothing and lost a great deal; the Buddhist scripture expenses it: those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.

Nothing can be preserved that is not good.

It makes a big difference whether you give something back or pay it off... The framers of the laws instituted festivals, in order that men should be publicly compelled to gaiety, as a necessary temperance for labors; We remember the great orator Pollio Asinius, who was not detained by anything beyond the tenth hour: he did not even need letters for an hour after that, so that no new concern arose, but he put the fatigue of the whole day in those two hours. Some joined in the middle of the day and put off some lighter work in the afternoon hours. Our elders also forbade a new report to be made in the senate after ten o'clock. The army divided the vigils, and the night was safe from the return of the expedition.

Death poses a problem which replaces all the others. What is deadly to philosophy, to the naive belief in the hierarchy of perplexities.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, "And why were such things made in the world?"

It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or "human-heartedness" (jen) was always felt to be superior to "righteousness" (i), since man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent. There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Man must be free of it all, of his bad conscience and of the bad salvation from this conscience in order to become in truth the way. Now, he no longer promises others the fulfillment of his duties, but promises himself the fulfillment of man.

We must relearn to be alone.

By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

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.

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

Lay hold of today's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.

Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

Fortune has taken away, but Fortune has given.

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.

All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal. But since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt.

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not. And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.

The weapon of the Republic is terror, and virtue is its strength.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.