Skip to main content
7 months 5 days ago

Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!

0
0
Source
source
As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 186; and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
6 months 1 week ago

Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 101
7 months 1 week ago

But it isn't just a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For the demons also believe you heard the apostle and tremble (Jas 2:19); but their believing doesn't do them any good. Faith alone is not enough, unless works too are joined to it: Faith working through love (Gal 5:6), says the apostle.

0
0
Source
source
16A:11:2
7 months 4 days ago

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, 1685
6 months 4 weeks ago

A witty saying proves nothing.

0
0
Source
source
Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien
6 months 2 weeks ago

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

0
0
Source
source
Sertorius 16 (Tr. Dryden and Clough)
7 months 1 day ago

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.
7 months 1 day ago

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!

0
0
Source
source
Philo to Cleanthes, Part XI
6 months 4 weeks ago

All sources of energy upon which industry depends are wasted when they are employed; and industry is expending them at a continually increasing rate. Already coal has been largely replaced by oil, and oil is being used up so fast that East and West alike conceive it necessary to their own prosperity to destroy the industry of the other. And what is true of oil is equally true of other natural resources. Every day, many square miles of forest are turned into newspaper, but there is no known process by which newspaper can be turned into forest. You will say that this need not worry us, since newspapers will be replaced by radio, but radio requires electricity, electricity requires power, and power depends upon raw materials.

0
0
Source
source
Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 4: The Limits of Human Power, p. 30
7 months 1 week ago

Let not that which in the case of another is contrary to nature become an evil for you; for you are born not to be humiliated along with others, nor to share in their misfortunes, but to share in their good fortune. If, however, someone is unfortunate, remember that his misfortune concerns himself. For God made all mankind to be happy, to be serene.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, ch. 24, 1
7 months 1 day ago

The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments. And, in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which maintains, as far as possible, a mediocrity, and a kind of insensibility, in every thing. As the good, the great, the sublime, the ravishing are found eminently in the genuine principles of theism; it may be expected, from the analogy of nature, that the base, the absurd, the mean, the terrifying will be equally discovered in religious fictions and chimeras.

0
0
Source
source
Part XV - General corollary
5 months 2 weeks ago

To eat, teeth must meet.

0
0
Source
source
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), p. 66.
4 months 6 days ago

What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 134
3 months 3 weeks ago

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

0
0
Source
source
Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3
5 months 3 weeks ago

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials - in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression. What he says so well is therefore intrinsically of value.

0
0
Source
source
p. 5
5 months 2 weeks ago

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The soul is subject to dollars.

0
0
Source
source
par. 6
6 months 2 weeks ago

He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.

0
0
Source
source
Of Garrulity (Tr. Goodwin)
6 months 4 weeks ago

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right. Variant translation: Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted by Wolfgang Pauli in a letter to Abraham Pais (17 August 1950) published in The Genius of Science (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 242
4 months 1 week ago

The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery. Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

0
0
Source
source
(Extracts, p. 57)
3 months 3 weeks ago

To speak frankly, the family bond in the civilizee regime' causes fathers to desire the death of their children and children to desire the death of their fathers.

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

The imagination is always restless and suggests a variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: And when Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the Nations of the World, will find so much of the Governments, Religion, and Manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that they will have but little Reverence for the Practices which are in use and credit amongst Men.

0
0
Source
source
First Treatise of Government
2 months 3 weeks ago

Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing. With this account of philosophy there is no need to quarrel. But having accepted it, a distinction remains to be observed, a distinction of capital importance, which we are in constant danger of forgetting. It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized' how he is to be recognized' how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in a individual way, etc.).

0
0
Source
source
Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
3 months 1 week ago

We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think-only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

0
0
Source
source
p. 112
5 months 1 week ago

Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 155
4 months 3 weeks ago

No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives that are wasted to produce the world's amusements. It is for this reason that "amusements" are not so amusing.

0
0
Source
source
p. 81
6 months 3 weeks ago

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.

0
0
Source
source
November 15, 1839
5 months 1 week ago

When I speak of 'negative dialectics' not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishization of the positive.

0
0
Source
source
p. 18
7 months 3 weeks ago

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.

0
0
Source
source
15:28 (KJV)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Without disarmament there can be no lasting peace. On the contrary, the continuation of military armaments in their present extent will with certainty lead to new catastrophies...For the creation of this public opinion in favor of disarmament every person living shares the responsibility, through ever deed and every word.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 187
4 months 2 weeks ago

Like many others, I came to philosophy to study matters of life and death, and was taught that professionalization required forgetting them. The more I learned, the more I grew convinced of the opposite: the history of philosophy was indeed animated by the questions that drew us there.

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

Life after all is made up of eating and sleeping, of meeting and saying good-by to friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of tears and laughter, of having a haircut once in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and watching one's neighbor fall off his roof.

0
0
Source
source
p. 202
6 months 1 day ago

The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century - XX Century, with English Translations (1913) by James Raymond Solly, p. 67
7 months 2 weeks ago

Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction
6 months 1 day ago

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XVII.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Any new technology is an evolutionary and biological mutation opening doors of perception and new spheres of action to mankind.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 67)

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia