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Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
4 months 1 week ago
Behold a God…

Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.

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Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 day ago
The moral flabbiness born of the...

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.

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To H. G. Wells, 9/11/1906
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Not from fear...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 day ago
That what we seek we shall...

That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
I have known only one person...

I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles.

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"Miracles" (1942), p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are circumstances in which even...

There are circumstances in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to behave with vigour and decision; and the most cautious forget their prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the Bandbox.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 day ago
Now men seem, not unreasonably, to...

Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 3 weeks ago
In every part and corner of...

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

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Old Mortality (1884).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 6 days ago
Times before you, when even the...

Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number. Dedication

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
All the passages in the Holy...

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

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p. 270
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Existing is plagiarism.

Existing is plagiarism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
3 months 2 weeks ago
A law there is….

A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon-such as live for ages- Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven.

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tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson. Cf. full quotation at Leonard p. 54-55 fr. 115, as paraphrased in Plutarch's Moralia
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 weeks ago
I construct my memories with my...

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
We are born helpless. As soon...

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves. Introduction

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 day ago
How can he [today's writer] be...

How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

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Goethe; or, The Writer
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 6 days ago
That children dream not the first...

That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
For a man petticoat government is...

For a man petticoat government is the limit of insolence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our elucidations of the preliminary concept...

Our elucidations of the preliminary concept of phenomenology show that its essential character does not consist in its actuality as a philosophical "movement." Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology solely by seizing upon it as a possibility.

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Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being (Stambaugh translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 day ago
We plant trees, we build stone...

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 day ago
In fine, I repeat, you must...

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
This is the pure form of...

This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
Why in the world shouldn't they...

Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

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Intentionality, and Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas Eldridge, p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
Let me suggest a theme for...

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, - returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

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Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
I am not sure but I...

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 5 days ago
Justice is the end of government....

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
The most heated defenders of a...

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

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F 8
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Death is too exact; it has...

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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Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 1 week ago
As human beings, we are endowed...

As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

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Ch. 3: Does History Repeat Itself?
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
Those alone are dear to Divinity...

Those alone are dear to Divinity who are hostile to injustice.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Institution has been devised to...

The Institution has been devised to afford the means of receiving your children at an early age, almost as soon as they can walk. By this means many of you, mothers and families, will be able to earn a better maintenance or support for your children; you will have less care and anxiety about them, while the children will be prevented from acquiring any bad habits. and gradually prepared to learn the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 days ago
He that will have his son...

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

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Maxima debetur pueris reverentia [The greatest respect is owed to the children]. Sec. 71; Note: Here Locke quotes Juvenal
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Who dismisses his adulterous wife and...

Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude.

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De adulterinis coniugiis, 2, 16, in Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Reaction to Synod Door to communion for divorced & remarried officially kicked open, November 2nd, 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
When you have faults, do not...

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 day ago
The practical consequence of such a[n...

The practical consequence of such a[n individualistic] philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,-is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions vi et armis upon Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

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"Preface"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
I think that if God forgives...

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

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Letter (19 April 1951); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 230
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
For two thousand years, Jesus has...

For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
To detach yourself elegantly from the...

To detach yourself elegantly from the world; to give contour and grace to sadness; a solitude in style; a walk that gives cadence to memories; stepping towards the intangible; with the breath in the trembling margins of things; the past reborn in the overflow of fragrances; the smell, through which we conquer time; the contour of the invisible things; the forms of the immaterial; to deepen yourself in the intangible; to touch the world airborne by smell; aerial dialogue and gliding dissolution; to bathe in your own reflecting fragmentation...

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
No period of history has ever...

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

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Ch. 32, January 13, 1944.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
'Tis a good word and a...

Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
This organization of functional discourse is...

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
It is always the psychic and...

It is always the psychic and social grounds, brought into play by each medium or technology, that readjust the balance of the hemispheres and of human sensibilities into equilibrium with those grounds.

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p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
When then is time?

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

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XI, 14
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
The pursuit of mathematics is a...

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

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Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 week 4 days ago
I have no reason to suppose...

I have no reason to suppose that Lenin gained his ideas from my books; but if that were true, I should be not a little proud of having contribute to the intellectual development of a man who seems to me to be at once the greatest theoretician of socialism since Marx and a statesman whose genius recalls that of Peter the Great.

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For Lenin, Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 day ago
It appears then, that capitalist production...

It appears then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 415.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 days ago
It is difficult…

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
The way for a person to...

The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.

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As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis", 1963
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 3 weeks ago
Because rhythm is a universal scheme...

Because rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change, it pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and architectural, as well as the dance. Since man succeeds only as he adapts his behavior to the order of nature, his achievements and victories, as they ensue upon resistance and struggle, become the matrix of all esthetic subject-matter; in some sense they constitute the common pattern of art, the ultimate conditions of form. Their cumulative orders of succession become without express intent the means by which man commemorates and celebrates the most intense and full moments of his experience. Underneath the rhythm of every art and every work of art there lies, as a substratum in the depths of the subconsciousness, the basic pattern of the relations of the live creature to his environment.

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p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Those who exalt themselves will be...

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

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18:14 NIV
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
The world and the universe is...

The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand.

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Philosophical Maxims
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