Skip to main content
2 months 4 weeks ago

Did Romeo and Juliet have a ... "relationship"? The term "relationship" ... betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14.
6 months 3 weeks ago

That of beaver skins, of beaver wool, and of gum Senega, has been subjected to higher duties; Great Britain, by the conquest of Canada and Senegal, having got almost the monopoly of those commodities.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, Article IV, p. 954-955.
6 months 2 weeks ago

The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

0
0
Source
source
To Henry Rutgers Marshall, 7 February 1899
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 55)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.

0
0
Source
source
The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
3 months 2 days ago

Press on, therefore, as you have begun; perhaps you will be led to perfection, or to a point which you alone understand is still short of perfection.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

After World War II, we hoped the world might be united for the sake of peacemaking. Now the world is being "globalized" for the sake of trade and the so-called free market - for the sake, that is, of plundering the world for cheap labor, cheap energy, and cheap materials. How nations, let alone regions and communities, are to shape and protect themselves within this "global economy" is far from clear.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

After Plotinus, says Schassler, fifteen centuries passed without the slightest scientific interest for the world of beauty and art. ...In reality, nothing of the kind happened. The science of aesthetics ... neither did nor could vanish, because it never existed. ... the Greeks were so little developed that goodness and beauty seemed to coincide. On that obsolete Greek view of life the science of aesthetics was invented by men of the eighteenth century, and especially shaped and mounted in Baumgarten's theory. The Greeks (as anyone may read in Bénard's book on Aristotle and Walter's work on Plato) never had a science of aesthetics.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Lastly, we must also know what Baptism signifies, and why God has ordained just such external sign and ceremony for the Sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church. But the act or ceremony is this, that we are sunk under the water, which passes over us, and afterwards are drawn out again. These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man, both of which must take place in us all our lives, so that a truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.

0
0
Source
source
On Infant Baptism, Large Catechism
3 months 1 week ago

Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood.

0
0
Source
source
The State of German Literature.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

0
0
Source
source
B xxxiv
5 months 2 weeks ago

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, place of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. ... I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. ... Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2002) by Lynn McDonald, pps. 177-179
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1
7 months 2 weeks ago

Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Every man knows that in his work he does best and accomplishes most when he has attained a proficiency that enables him to work intuitively. That is, there are things which we come to know so well that we do not know how we know them. So it seems to me in matters of principle. Perhaps we live best and do things best when we are not too conscious of how and why we do them.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

It is as if thinking itself had been reduced to the level of industrial processes, subjected to a close schedule-in short, made part and parcel of production.

0
0
Source
source
p. 21.
7 months 2 weeks ago

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 1
3 months 1 week ago

For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like? B

0
0
Source
source
k. III, ch. 3.
7 months 2 weeks ago

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

But to return to the Jewish question. Other groups and nations cultivate their individual traditions. There is no reason why we should sacrifice ours. Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. Even a god could not formulate a proposition on historical subjects like 2 x 2 = 4, for what is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical experience.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

0
0
Source
source
Part 3, Chapter 1
6 months 1 week ago

Philosophy hasn't made any progress?-If someone scratches where it itches, do we have to see progress? Is it not genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching?

0
0
Source
source
p. 98e
6 months 2 weeks ago

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

0
0
Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 345
2 months 4 weeks ago

This is the real secret of life-to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

0
0
Source
source
The Essence of Alan Watts
2 months 2 weeks ago

Only an atheist can be a good Christian.

0
0
Source
source
Atheismus im Christentum 1968, english translation: Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom 1972
2 months 4 weeks ago

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking. Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly. And only the soul gives a groan...

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 257 "On Thinking for Yourself" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms(1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
5 months ago

Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

0
0
Source
source
"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", in The China Critic, Vol. III, no. 4 (23 January 1930), p. 81
6 months 2 weeks ago

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

0
0
Source
source
p. 364
1 month 4 weeks ago

He speaks Russian as a first language and prefers the communal side of things, and studying the language of ancient religious texts so he can study them directly.

I like to sort of tread the line and see if I can be convinced that universal values are actually somehow particular. So far, not budging.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

0
0
Source
source
Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
5 months 1 week ago

Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

For what gives my work its peculiar quality, and what is most remarkable in the present age, is this. Fortune has guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has forced them to incline towards one and the same end; a historian should likewise bring before his readers under one synoptical view the operations by which she has accomplished her general purpose.

0
0
5 months 4 days ago

I write to thee on this subject, friend, because I am angry at a book which I have just left, which is so large, that it seems to contain universal science, but it hath almost split my head, without teaching me anything.

0
0
Source
source
No. 66.

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

0
0
Source
source
North to the Orient (1935) Ch. 19
4 months 1 week ago

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

0
0
Source
source
Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
6 months 1 week ago

This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.

0
0
Source
source
C 1920, expressing displeasure at a village that had a park with a fountain.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia