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4 months 2 weeks ago

Art may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.

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Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
3 months 2 weeks ago

Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.

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Part 4, Chapter 5
4 months 2 weeks ago

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

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Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
2 months 1 week ago

I speak as a biologist. There aren't many absolutely clear distinctions in biology. Mostly what we have is a spectrum. But the male-female divide is exceptional in biology. It really is a true binary.

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Interviewed by Judith Woods, as cited in "Richard Dawkins interview: 'I shall continue to use every one of the prohibited words'", The Telegraph
3 months 1 week ago

Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.

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Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986 : Flowers in the Desert (2000) by Britta Benke, p. 28
4 months 2 weeks ago

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- Were one to go round the world with an intention of giving a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the merits and the demerits of most men and women scarcely amount to the value of either.

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Essay on the Immortality of the Soul
3 weeks 3 days ago

The same things, therefore, does the Sun communicate to things intelligible, over whom he was appointed by the Good to reign and to command: although these were created and began to exist at the same moment with himself.

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2 weeks 1 day ago

The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed by legislation doing so have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated.

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Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bill for Establishing a National Bank., 1791. ME 3:146
2 months 1 week ago

It is an article of passionate faith among "politically correct" biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Solicitation and effort or conation belong properly to animate beings alone. When they are attributed to other things, they must be taken in a metaphorical sense; but a philosopher should abstain from metaphor.

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Paragraph 3
4 months 2 weeks ago

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

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As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

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People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

America is like a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair!

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In Quote: The Weekly Digest, vol. 23, no. 19 (4 May 1952) p. 16
5 months 5 days ago

Sincerity is that whereby self-completion is effected, and its way is that by which man must direct himself.

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1 week 5 days ago

Whenever you suffer pain, keep in mind that it's nothing to be ashamed of and that it can't degrade your guiding intelligence, nor keep it from acting rationally and for the common good. And in most cases you should be helped by the saying of Epicurus, that pain is never unbearable or unending, so you can remember these limits and not add to them in your imagination. Remember too that many common annoyances are pain in disguise, such as sleepiness, fever and loss of appetite. When they start to get you down, tell yourself you are giving in to pain.

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VII. 64:280
2 months 1 day ago

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

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On Marriage
3 months 1 week ago

I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.

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Ch 20, as quoted in Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

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p. 440

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

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1:28:29 English Latin Latin: Sed cum omnibus prodesse non possis, his potissimum consulendum est, qui pro locorum et temporum vel quarumlibet rerum opportunitatibus constrictius tibi quasi quadam sorte iunguntur.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Only a neutral, who is indifferent to the stake and perhaps to all stakes, can appreciate aesthetically the grandeur of a fine disaster

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p. 212
5 months 1 week ago

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity, a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

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3 months 1 week ago

Death is too exact; it has all the reasons on its side. Mysterious for our instincts, it takes shape, to our reflection, limpid, without glamor, and without the false lures of the unknown. By dint of accumulating non-mysteries and monopolizing non-meanings, life inspires more dread than death: it is life which is the Great Unknown.

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2 weeks 1 day ago

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

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Michael Korda, in Success! (1977), p. 284
5 months 2 weeks ago

If I were to imagine a girl deeply in love and some man who wanted to use all his reasoning powers and knowledge to ridicule her passion, well, there's surely no question of the enamoured girl having to choose between keeping her wealth and being ridiculed. No, but if some extremely cool and calculating man calmly told the young girl, "I will explain to you what love is," and the girl admitted that everything he told her was quite correct, I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?

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1 month 3 weeks ago

The irrationality of the "appeal to Nature" is illustrated by a simple thought-experiment. Imagine, fancifully, if starvation, disease, parasitism, disembowelling, asphyxiation and being eaten alive were not endemic to the living world - or such miseries have already been abolished and replaced by an earthly paradise. Would anyone propose there is ethical case for (re)introducing them? Even proposing such a thought-experiment can sound faintly ridiculous.

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"A Welfare State For Elephants?: A Case Study of Compassionate Stewardship", Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, Vol. 3, Iss. 2 (Nov. 2015), p. 162
3 months 1 week ago

The unfortunate thing about public misfortunes is that everyone regards himself as qualified to talk about them.

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4 months 1 week ago

I am my world.

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(The microcosm.) (5.63) Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.

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Volume I, Book I
2 months 3 weeks ago

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

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B 33
3 months 1 week ago

Privilege is a regulation rendering a few men, and those only, by the accident of their birth, eligible to certain situations. It kills all liberal ambition in the rest of mankind, by opposing to it an apparently insurmountable bar. It diminishes it in the favored class itself, by showing them the principal qualification as indefeasibly theirs. Privilege entitles a favored few to engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left at large to all her sons; it puts into the hands of those few the means of oppression against the rest of their species; it fill them witth vain-glory, and affords them every incitement to insolence and a lofty disregard to the feeling and interests of others.

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Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
4 months 2 weeks ago

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

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4 months 5 days ago

My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

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Considerations by the Way

That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 894.
1 week 5 days ago

From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.

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I, 5

I commend you and rejoice in the fact that you are persistent in your studies, and that, putting all else aside, you make it each day your endeavour to become a better man.

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2 months 3 days ago

I say that where the public morality is concerned it may be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals... It must then, I think, be admitted that, where health is concerned, and where morality is concerned, the State is justified in interfering with the contracts of individuals.

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Speech in the House of Commons (22 May 1846), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 442
3 months 1 week ago

Without some affinity in human ideas art would certainly be impossible; but it can never be exactly determined how far the intentions of the poet are realized.

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Gottlob Frege (1892). On Sense and Reference.
4 months 3 weeks ago

When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is "inner" or "new." When speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called "sensual," "outward," or "old." Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day."

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p. 51
1 month 2 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.

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The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
2 weeks 1 day ago

Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung looseand retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.

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Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
4 months 2 weeks ago

When the husk gets separated from the kernel, almost all men run after the husk and pay their respects to that. It is only the husk of Christianity that is so bruited and wide spread in this world; the kernel is still the very least and rarest of all things. There is not a single church founded on it.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.

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Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757

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