Skip to main content
2 months 1 week 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.

0
0
Source
source
Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
6 months 1 week ago

People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 17 December, 1920
6 months 3 weeks ago

These five rules [above] form all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, immutable, and to say all, geometrical; and the eight rules together render them even more perfect.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is lord.

0
0
Source
source
Act III, scene ix
5 months 2 weeks ago

How did they meet? By chance, like everybody ... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?

0
0
Source
source
Prologue
6 months 1 week ago

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

0
0
Source
source
"Sixième discours: sur la nature de l'homme," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738

Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. ...Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree [probably Caesar Baronius]: "The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.

0
0
Source
source
Variant translation: I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: "That the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heavens go."
3 months 1 day ago

For this also we will honour the poor Manchester Insurrection, and augur well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong men,- inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they can articulate of it is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right noble instinct of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes them: the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom Fact patronises; of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good augury!

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is not Matter itself that is here meant, but the ultimate Cause of things incorporeal, which also existed before Matter. Moreover, it is asserted by Heraclitus: "Death unto souls is but a change to liquid." This Attis, therefore, the intelligible Power, the holder together of things material below the Moon, having intercourse with the pre-ordained Cause of Matter, holds intercourse therewith, not as a male with a female, but as though flowing into it, since he is the same with it.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

0
0
Source
source
VI, 19
6 months 2 weeks ago

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

0
0
Source
source
The Prince (1513), Ch. 6; translated by W. K. Marriott
6 months 1 week ago

Do not most of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having come upon some young officers debauching some girls, said to them angrily: "Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?" "Character"

0
0
Source
source
1764
5 months 2 weeks ago

Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

0
0
Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
6 months 2 weeks ago

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 9
6 months 1 week ago

The totalitarian movements aim at and succeed in organizing masses-not classes, like the old interest parties of the Continental nation-states; not citizens with opinions about, interests in, the handling of public affairs, like the parties of Anglo-Saxon countries.

0
0
Source
source
Part 3, Ch. 10
4 months 3 weeks ago

It has been said a thousand times and in a thousand books that ancestor-worship is for the most part the source of primitive religions, and it may be strictly said that what most distinguishes man from the other animals is that, in one form or another, he guards his dead and does not give them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is an animal that guards its dead.

0
0
6 months 6 days ago

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.

0
0
Source
source
p. 50e
3 months 4 days ago

Indeed, I think we may concede to our Academician, without flattery, his claim that in the principle [principio, i. e., accelerated motion] laid down in this treatise he has established a new science dealing with a very old subject. Observing with what ease and clearness he deduces from a single principle the proofs of so many theorems, I wonder not a little how such a question escaped the attention of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and so many other mathematicians and illustrious philosophers, especially since so many ponderous tomes have been devoted to the subject of motion.

0
0
Source
source
(Galileo referred to himself as the/our Academician in his dialogue) Sagredo, Third Day P. 242
7 months 1 week ago

How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Is it for this purpose that we are strong-that we may have light burdens to bear?

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real world.

0
0
Source
source
p. xxvi.
4 months 3 weeks ago

All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 8: "The Quantum Theory", p. 189
2 months 2 weeks ago

By the gods I do not want the Galileans to be killed or beaten unjustly nor to suffer any other ill. I do, however, state that the god-fearing (theosebeis) should be preferred to them ... honour should go to the gods and to the men and cities that worship them.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Julian the Apostate (1978), by G. W. Bowersock, Ch. 8 : The Puritanical Pagan, p, 83
3 months 2 weeks ago

The idea of politics as a conservation in which the collision of opinions is moderated and accommodated, in which what is sought is not truth but peace, has been almost entirely lost, and supplanted by a legalist paradigm in which all political claims and conflicts are modelled in the jargon of rights.

0
0
Source
source
'Oakeshott as a Liberal' (p.80)
2 months 1 week ago

Nations are barbarian in their infancy but not savage. The barbarian is a proportional mean between the savage and the citizen. He already possesses no end of knowledge: he has habitations, some agriculture, domestic animals, laws, a cult, regular tribunals; he lacks only the sciences.

0
0
Source
source
p. 25
6 months 1 week ago

In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

0
0

It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you."

0
0
Source
source
Book II, ch. 18, § 24, Reported in Bartlett's Quotations (1919) as "Be not hurried away by excitement, but say, "Semblance, wait for me a little".
5 months 6 days ago

The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Chapter 29
6 months 1 week ago

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 13, pg. 363.
2 months 1 week ago

All law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision.

0
0
Source
source
p.13
6 months 2 weeks ago

The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 26
6 months 1 day ago

Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

And having said this, Jesus smote his face with both his hands, and then smote the ground with his head. And having raised his head, he said: "Cursed be every one who shall insert into my sayings that I am the son of God." At these words the disciples fell down as dead, whereupon Jesus lifted them up, saying: 'Let us fear God now, if we would not be affrighted in that day.'

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 53
7 months 1 week ago

The natural way of doing this [seeking scientific knowledge or explanation of fact] is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not 'knowable relatively to us' and 'knowable' without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature. Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which became known to us by later analysis...

0
0
2 months 6 days ago

As the entire middle class, the bourgeois and petty bourgeois intelligentsia, boycotted the Soviet government for months after the October Revolution and crippled the railroad, post and telegraph, and educational and administrative apparatus, and, in this fashion, opposed the workers government, naturally all measures of pressure were exerted against it. These included the deprivation of political rights, of economic means of existence, etc., in order to break their resistance with an iron fist. It was precisely in this way that the socialist dictatorship expressed itself, for it cannot shrink from any use of force to secure or prevent certain measures involving the interests of the whole.

0
0
5 months 6 days ago

Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

We feel and know that we are eternal.

0
0
Source
source
Part V, Prop. XXIII, Scholium

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia