I prefer to reach the few who really want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused.

We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.

How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among their friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

Look now, this is the starting point of philosophy: the recognition that different people have conflicting opinions, the rejection of mere opinion so that it comes to be viewed with mistrust, an investigation of opinion to determine whether it is rightly held, and the discovery of a standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have devised for the determining of weights, or the carpenter's rule for determining whether things are straight or crooked.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.

The physical change in the thickness of walls since the Middle Ages could be shown in a diagram. In the fourteenth century each house was a fortress. Man spent the major portion of his day in them, in secret and well-defended solitude. That solitude, working on the soul hour after hour, forged it, like a transcendent blacksmith, into a compact and forceful character. Under its treatment, man consolidated his individual destiny and sallied forth with impunity, never yielding to the contamination from the public. It is only in isolation that we gain, almost automatically, a certain discrimination in ideas, desires, longings, that we learn which are ours, and which are anonymous, floating in the air, falling on us like dust in the street.

I was brought up in the Christian religion, and although I can scarcely sanction all the improper attempts to gain the emancipation of woman, all paganlike reminiscences also seem foolish to me. My brief and simple opinion is that woman is certainly as good as man-period. Any more discursive elaboration of the difference between the sexes or deliberation on which sex is superior is an idle intellectual occupation for loafers and bachelors.

I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that "we have" or "we don't have"; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. I believe that "freedom of choice" is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.

You have not that power you ought to have over him, till he comes to be more afraid of offending so good a friend than of losing some part of his future expectation.

My Father is glorified in this, that you keep bearing much fruit and prove yourselves my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love. “These things I have spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends. You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because I have made known to you all the things I have heard from my Father.

In such a chain, too, or succession of objects, each part is caused by that which preceded it, and causes that which succeeds it. Where then is the difficulty? But the WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct countries into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.

It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.

For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight, And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation, and the first step towards co-operation lies in the hearts of individuals.

Jung believed that he was proceeding scientifically, but most Freudians remain convinced that he was inventing his own underground realm, rather as Tolkien invented Middle Earth. There is at least an element of truth in this view.

Fools -- for their thoughts are not well-considered who suppose that not-being exists or that anything dies and is wholly annihilated.

A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'.

On recent and contemporary literature student's need is least and our help least. They ought to understand it better than we, and if they do not then there is something radically wrong either with them or with the literature. But I need not labour the point. There is an intrinsic absurdity in making current literature a subject of academic study, and the student who wants a tutor's assistance in reading the works of his own contemporaries might as well ask for a nurse's assistance in blowing his own nose.

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The order of authority derives from God, as the Apostle says [in Romans 13:1-7]. For this reason, the duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it. There are two ways in which the first may occur. Either because of a defect in the person, if he is unworthy; or because of some defect in the way itself by which power was acquired, if, for example, through violence, or simony or some other illegal method.

I suppose it is written that any one who sets up for a bit of a philosopher, must contradict himself to his very face. For here have I fairly talked myself into thinking that we have the whole thing before us at last; that there is no answer to the mystery, except that there are as many as you please; that there is no centre to the maze because, like the famous sphere, its centre is everywhere; and that agreeing to differ with every ceremony of politeness, is the only "one undisturbed song of pure concent" to which we are ever likely to lend our musical voices.

When Scipio became consul and was keen on getting the province of Africa, promising that Carthage should be completely destroyed, and the senate would not agree to this because Fabius Maximus was against it, he threatened to appeal to the people, for he knew full well how pleasing such projects are to the populace.

Tension weakens the bow; the want of it, the mind.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras.

(On the Trinitarian indwelling personally experienced by Saint Augustine) But what is it that I love in loving You? Not corporeal beauty, nor the splendour of time, nor the radiance of the light, so pleasant to our eyes, nor the sweet melodies of songs of all kinds, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs pleasant to the embracements of flesh. I love not these things when I love my God; and yet I love a certain kind of light, and sound, and fragrance, and food, and embracement in loving my God, who is the light, sound, fragrance, food, and embracement of my inner man — where that light shines unto my soul which no place can contain, where that sounds which time snatches not away, where there is a fragrance which no breeze disperses, where there is a food which no eating can diminish, and where that clings which no satiety can sunder. This is what I love, when I love my God.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

He that thinks diversion may not lie in hard and painful labour, forgets the early rising, hard riding, heat, cold and hunger of huntsmen, which is yet known to be the constant recreation of men of the greatest condition.

Plagued by Western habits of either-or, dualistic thinking, we all may fail to understand that race, class and gender interconnect to sustain a corporate ruling class. In the language of African-American essayist bell hooks, they are interlocking systems of oppression. Neither Latina nor Anglo women should yield to the temptation of making a hierarchy of oppressions where battles are fought over whether racism is "worse" than sexism, or class oppression is "deeper" than racism, etc. Instead of hierarchies we need bridges which, after all, exist to make two ends meet.

If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy.

To regiment artists, to make them servants of some particular cause does violence to the very springs of artistic creation. But it does more than that. It betrays the very cause of a better future it would serve, for in its subjugation of the individuality of the artist it annihilates the source of that which is genuinely new. Where the regimentation is successful, it would cause the future to be but a rearrangement of the past.

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their simulation models.

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,-to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend. With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,-and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,-that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth-that of Science-on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.

I believe that the advance of science depends upon the free competition of thought, and thus upon freedom, and that it must come to an end if freedom is destroyed (though it may well continue for some time in some fields, especially in technology).