Skip to main content
4 months 1 week ago

God cries to my heart: "Save me!" God cries to men, to animals, to plants, to matter: "Save me!" Listen to your heart and follow him. Shatter your body and awake: We are all one. Love man because you are he. Love animals and plants because you were they, and now they follow you like faithful co-workers and slaves. Love your body; only with it may you fight on this earth and turn matter into spirit. Love matter. God clings to it tooth and nail, and fights. Fight with him. Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom. Do not condescend to ask: "Shall we conquer? Shall we be conquered?" Fight on!

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. III, ch. 7.
6 months 2 weeks ago

If by motivation we mean whatever it is that causes someone to follow a particular course of action, then every action is motivated - by definition. But in most human behavior the relation between motives and action is not simple; it is mediated by a whole chain of events and surrounding conditions. We observe a man scratching his arm. His motive (or goal)? To relieve an itch.

0
0
Source
source
p. 265.
8 months 1 week ago

What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
8 months 1 week ago

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 629
5 months 1 week ago

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IV: "The Golden Rule and After", p. 110.
6 months 4 days ago

The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage.

0
0
Source
source
"Idle Hands" (p. 127)
6 months 3 weeks ago

You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

0
0
Source
source
F160
7 months 4 days ago

Man alone has the power of self-realization, the power to be a self-determining subject in all processes of becoming, for he alone has an understanding of potentialities and a knowledge of 'notions.' His very existence is the process of actualizing his potentialities, of molding his life according to the notions of reason.

0
0
Source
source
P. 9
7 months 4 days ago

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

0
0
Source
source
11:25-30 (KJV)
1 month 3 weeks ago

Opportunists never support justice....

0
0
9 months 1 day ago

It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin. It is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. He knows how what is distant lies in what is near. He knows where the wind proceeds from. He knows how what is minute becomes manifested. Such a one, we may be sure, will enter into virtue.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

All the world's not a stage.

0
0
Source
source
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 94
8 months 1 week ago

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 5
8 months 1 week ago

When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.

0
0
Source
source
A Discourse, &c. &c.
8 months 1 week ago

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

To me it seems clear that the descriptions of human life we find in the novels of Tolstoy or George Eliot are not mere entertainment; they teach us to perceive what goes on in social and individual life. And such descriptions require the many subtle distinctions that ordinary language has made available to us. The question of the relevance or irrelevance of "how we speak" is not just a question for philosophers, although it is that too. It is a question for philosophers because once ordinary language is laughed out of the room, philosophical theories are no longer held responsible at all to the ways we actually speak and actually live; but it is a question for more than just philosophers because, at bottom, contempt for ordinary language is contempt for all the humanities.

0
0
Source
source
"Science and Philosophy"
5 months 1 week ago

Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in: Fayek S. Hourani (2012) Daily Bread for Your Mind and Soul, p. 336
7 months 2 weeks ago

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Part I.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

0
0
Source
source
The character Suzanne Simon, in La Religieuse [The Nun]
8 months 1 week ago

At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you-are you there? I have returned, here I am again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you anew. Shall I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call "divine". There is no other way. All other ways are false paths.

0
0
Source
source
Book 2, 12. Nov. 1913
9 months 1 day ago

How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them! We look for them, but do not see them; we listen to, but do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

It is an uphill race, and a race against time, for if the American form of democracy overtakes us first, the majority will no more relax their despotism than a single despot would. But our only chance is to come forward as Liberals, carrying out the democratic idea, not as Conservatives, resisting it.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Henry Fawcett (5 February 1860), quoted in Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954), p. 418
4 months 3 weeks ago

Whoever complains about the death of anyone, is complaining that he was a man. Everyone is bound by the same terms: he who is privileged to be born, is destined to die.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Never have nations been civilized, except by religion.

0
0
Source
source
XXXIII, p. 99
4 months 1 week ago

You seem to consider the federal judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have with others the same passions for the party, for power and the privilege of the corps. Their power is the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820
8 months 2 days ago

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5
6 months 2 weeks ago

The assertion fallacy ... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

0
0
Source
source
P. 141.
8 months 2 weeks ago

Visions are a feeble resource, you will say, against great adversity! Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul, and those who possess them are equally forced to project themselves into the future for want of finding enjoyments that satisfy them, in the present.

0
0
Source
source
Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
8 months 1 week ago

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
6 months 2 weeks ago

The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

0
0
Source
source
Laws of Motion, II
7 months 1 week ago

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Goethe, (1828).
8 months 2 weeks ago

Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.

0
0
Source
source
Act III, scene iv
8 months 1 week ago

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 5
4 months 3 weeks ago

The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East - in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

0
0
Source
source
Abridgement of Vols. 7-10 by D. C. Somervell
6 months 1 week ago

McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are - well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good - not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort.Dawkins: There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting - it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Man's life cannot "be lived" by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 3 "Human Nature and Character
7 months 3 weeks ago

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
7 months 1 week ago

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Socialism" article of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition (1887), edited by Thomas Spencer Baynes with assistance of William Robertson Smith, Vol. 22, p. 216, Charles Scribner's Sons

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia