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Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 4 days ago
books are only what we want...

books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
The most dangerous thing you can...

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity", and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

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Book I, Chapter 2, "Some Objections"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
To think that so many have...

To think that so many have succeeded in dying!

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
I cannot conceive how any man...

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

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Volume iii, p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 1 week ago
War is the father and king...

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
What we principally thought of, was...

What we principally thought of, was to alter people's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and know what was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon one another. While fully recognizing the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. Although this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day, now relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct.

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(pp. 111-112)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
In America a woman loses her...

In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.

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Book Three, Chapter X.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Paradoxical as it may seem, a...

Paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of a great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
We replace God as best we...

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
To prove the Gospels by a...

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

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As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months 2 weeks ago
The task of universal pragmatics is...

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 weeks 3 days ago
Philosophy is not the owl of...

Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.

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49
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
And if you lend to those...

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

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Jesus on usury from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:34-35
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month ago
Many city-dwellers have a romanticized conception...

Many city-dwellers have a romanticized conception of the living world. From another perspective, some "conservation biologists" favour e.g. "Pleistocene rewilding". By contrast, I think any truly compassionate person should be horrified at the terrible suffering of Nature "red in tooth and claw". Why not aim for a cruelty-free world instead?

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"Interview with Pensata Animal", Pensata Animal, 25 Oct. 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
War involves in its progress such...

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances ... that no human wisdom can calculate the end. Prospects on the Rubicon

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London: J. Debrett, 1787
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
Nothing prints more lively in our...

Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

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Book II, Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
Thus every action must be due...

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 5 days ago
Nuclear power started in weaponry. It...

Nuclear power started in weaponry. It was designed for war. And any instrument that has its origins in war always has the potential for war. First because the material you need to make bombs, you're multiplying it though nuclear power, you're taking uranium and turn it into plutonium. Second by equipping governments and private companies with this potential, in society you spread this potential, that here is a weapon of mass destruction available. This is exactly what happened with fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers came from explosive factories are increasingly used in terrorist attacks.

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On nuclear power, as quoted in "Koodankulam Must Be Stopped: Vandana Shiva", DiaNuke
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
1 day ago
In my work, I have always...

In my work, I have always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. In a conversation with Freeman Dyson.

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Quoted in Chandrasekhar, S. (2010-12-01) . "Beauty and the quest for beauty in science". Physics Today 63 (12): 57-62. ISSN 0031-9228. DOI:10.1063/1.3529003.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 4 days ago
Sovereignty, the freedom unto death, is...

Sovereignty, the freedom unto death, is threatening to a society that is organized around work and production.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
There are but few points in...

There are but few points in which the English, as a people, are entitled to the moral pre-eminence with which they are accustomed to compliment themselves at the expense of other nations: but, of these points, perhaps the one of greatest importance is, that the higher classes do not lie, and the lower, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of lying. To run any risk of weakening this feeling, a difficult one to create, or, when once gone, to restore, would be a permanent evil too great to be incurred for so very temporary a benefit as the ballot would confer, even on the most exaggerated estimate necessity.

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Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), pp. 48-49
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 3 weeks ago
Canned laughter

Canned laughter: After some supposedly funny or witty remark you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself - here we have the exact counterpart of the Chorus in classical tragedy; it is here that we have to look for 'living Antiquity.' That is to say, why this laughter? The first possible answer - that it serves to remind us when to laugh - is interesting enough, because it implies the paradox that laughter is a matter of duty and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not sufficient because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be that the Other - embodied in the television set - is relieving us even of our duty to laugh - is instead laughing for us. So even if, tired from a hard days stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
When one considers the sublime disposition...

When one considers the sublime disposition underlying the tmly universal educatiOn (of traditional India) ... then what IS or has been called religion in Europe seems to us to be scarcely deserving of that name. And one feels compelled to advise those who Wish to witness religion to travel to India for that purpose ....

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
We must now turn to the...

We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him... Consequently, we must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally of the archetype known from historical sources.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
Death induces the sensual person to...

Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month ago
It is hard to imagine an...

It is hard to imagine an experience more horrific than being eaten alive. Most of us would prefer not to imagine what it must feel like. Note that the photographer here had to persuade the park ranger to violate the park rules and put the baby elephant out of his misery.By analogy, suppose it were lawful to visit Third World countries for photoshoots but illegal to "interfere" and help a stricken human baby. Is there a fundamental difference between "ethical" intervention to help humans and "sentimental" pleas to "interfere" and help non-humans? Should we encourage the preservation of life-forms such as the hyena in their current guise? Or do the value judgements underlying the "science" of conservation biology need to be re-examined?

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"Hyenas Eat Baby Elephant Alive: The Case for Intervention"
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
What is now happening to the...

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 3 weeks ago
Newspapers are the second hand of...

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
In looking at this wreck of...

In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,-probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
…the prince says…

. ... the prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

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Part 3, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 4 days ago
The value of the goal lies...

The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.

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Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The difficulty of literature is not...

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

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Truth of Intercourse.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
My immediate consciousness, my absolute perception,...

My immediate consciousness, my absolute perception, cannot go beyond myself, - I have immediate knowledge only of myself, whatever I know further I know only by reasoning, in the same manner in which I have come to those conclusions concerning the original powers of Nature, which certainly do not lie within the circle of my perceptions. I, however, - that which I call myself, - am not the man-forming power of Nature, but only one of its manifestations ; and only of this manifestation am I conscious, not of that power, whose existence I have only discovered from the necessity of explaining my own.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
There have been men before ......

There have been men before ... who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself... as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
When profit diminishes, merchants are very...

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

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Chapter IX
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Every beloved object is the center...

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

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Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses. Variant translations:
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
I wish to propose for the...

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less...

Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
Paradise on earth…

Paradise on earth is where I am.

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Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
One comfort is, that Great Men,...

One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;-in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Explore, and explore, and explore. Be...

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is merely bad luck in...

There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
4 weeks ago
The belief that torture is always...

The belief that torture is always wrong is a prejudice inherited from an obsolete philosophy. We need to shed the belief that human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured. As Rawls and others have shown, basic freedoms must form a coherent whole. Self-evidently, there can be no right to attack basic human rights. Therefore, once the proper legal procedures are in place, torturing terrorists cannot violate their rights. In fact, in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured.This is what demonstrates the moral superiority of liberal societies over others, past and present. Other societies have degraded terrorists by subjecting them to lawless and unaccountable power. In the new world that is taking shape, terrorists, although they themselves degrade human rights by practising terrorism, will be afforded the full dignity of due legal process, even while being tortured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Calculus required continuity, and continuity...

The Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

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Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
World,-this man is not a slave...

World,-this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants none of thy rewards;

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
I heartily accept the motto...

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
Just now
If in Nietzsche's....
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Main Content / General
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
"We may ignore, but we can...

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There has never been any custom,...

There has never been any custom, however useless it may become with changing conditions, that isn't clung to desperately simply because it is something old and familiar.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
Out of my experience, such as...

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.

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"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'", in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589
Philosophical Maxims
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