Skip to main content
8 months 3 weeks ago

Observe, observe perpetually.

0
0

The heart is everywhere, and each part of the organism is only the specialized force of the heart itself.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

Middle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 3 : On Middle Age
6 months 1 week ago

African audiences cannot accept our passive consumer role in the presence of film.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 44)
4 months 4 weeks ago

Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

0
0
Source
source
The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
4 months 3 days ago

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him. I am quite aware that we have just now lightheartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the buildings of the temple of science; and in many cases, our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances.Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it.

0
0
8 months 3 days ago

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, epistle i, line 41
7 months 1 week ago

As the mathematics are now understood, each branch - or, if you please, each problem, - is but the study of the relations of a collection of connected objects, without parts, without any distinctive characters, except their names or designating letters. These objects are commonly called points; but to remove all notion of space relations, it may be better to name them monads. The relations between these points are mere complications of two different kinds of elementary relations, which may be termed immediate connection and immediate non-connection. All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.

0
0
Source
source
p. 268
8 months 2 weeks ago

The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.

0
0
Source
source
p. 53e
7 months 6 days ago

Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's writings, deriving directly from assent to invariable social laws. 'True resignation, that is, a disposition to endure necessary evils steadfastly and without any hope of compensation therefore, can result only from a profound feeling for the invariable laws that govern the variety of natural phenomena.

0
0
Source
source
P. 345
8 months 1 week ago

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.

0
0
Source
source
Letter on Humanism
4 months 1 week ago

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

0
0
Source
source
II, 14
6 months 3 weeks ago

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so ; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
6 months 1 week ago

The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.

0
0
Source
source
Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
6 months 6 days ago

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix
8 months 3 weeks ago

I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

The mob has always behaved in this way-eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.

0
0
Source
source
Part 2
7 months 2 weeks ago

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Charles James Fox
8 months 1 week ago

Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IV, Section 32, p. 203
7 months 6 days ago

Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.

0
0

This is a tired destructive view of life. Aversion to suffering would work just as well, as in, accomplishing goals at your convenience without suffering...

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 106-107
8 months 1 week ago

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
4 months 1 week ago

The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.

0
0
Source
source
Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III
8 months 2 weeks ago

It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, Essay 6: Of The Independency of Parliament; first line often paraphrased as "It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave."
5 months 4 days ago

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

The French are ... the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.

0
0
Source
source
p. 245
7 months 1 week ago

Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth . . .

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 5-6

But the truth is that my work - I was going to say my mission - is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

0
0
2 months ago

I'd think that is impossible because it ceases to be truth about something at some point and just becomes the thing.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant-the act of a tyrant.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) XI, 18
8 months 4 days ago

Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 167.
8 months 1 week ago

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

0
0
Source
source
Works and Days
8 months 1 week ago

Every really able man, in whatever direction he work,-a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

0
0
Source
source
Immortality
9 months 3 days ago

It is said in the Book of Poetry, "In silence is the offering presented, and the spirit approached to; there is not the slightest contention." Therefore the superior man does not use rewards, and the people are stimulated to virtue. He does not show anger, and the people are awed more than by hatchets and battle-axes.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Only the skilled can judge the skilfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.

0
0
Source
source
A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942), Chapter 2: "Is Criticism Possible?"
8 months 3 weeks ago

The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.

0
0
Source
source
Thesis 10

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia