In this initial illimitableness of...

In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.

Not to live as if...

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.

The evidence of our own...

The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.

Strategy without tactics is the...

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

We must learn to look...

We must learn to look upon life as an apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, a perpetual diminution in our pretensions, our hopes, our powers, and our liberty.

His systematic account of the...

His systematic account of the nature and methods of 'science', in the broadest sense, attained an authority in England that was positively papal.

Some people, when they do...

Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren't, but they're still aware of it--still regard it as a debt. But others don't even do that. They're like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return.

Science does not stand still,...

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.

The image of St. Theresa,...

The image of St. Theresa, the Spaniard, is not less than that of St Francis of Assisi. Let us also recall the ancient times when, in spite of the fact that masculine egoism always attempted to suppress the achievements of women, there were always some illumined minds that did not submit to this shameful weakness.

Another party [the Tories] continued...

Another party [the Tories] continued sour, sullen, and inactive, with judgments so weak, and passions so strong, that even experience, and a severe one surely, was lost upon them. They waited, like the Jews, for a Messiah, that may never come; and under whom, if he did come, they would be strangely disappointed in their expectations of glory and triumph, and universal dominion. Whilst they waited, they were marked out like the Jews, a distinct race, hewers of wood and drawers of water, scarce members of the community, tho born in the country.

Our questions and answers are...

Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition. The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

Understand however that every man...

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

The argument for Christian practices...

The argument for Christian practices becomes all the stronger, when also nature, which is the first rule of all, supports them. Well, she is the first who lays it down that a crown does not become the head.

Bolingbroke was typical not only...

Bolingbroke was typical not only in his attempt to define the true interests of the state but also in his use of the analogy between the political society and the family to assert that not unity but discord was the natural relationship between states. The personal needs of men were met by the development of society out of the family. Self-love, which originally assisted this development and produced separate societies, then ensured that the development would spread no further. "The great commonwealth of mankind cannot be brought under one government, nor subsist without any." As Bolingbroke used these views to make himself an early advocate of a maritime, insular, colonial Great Britain, intervening in European affairs only when her interest in the balance of power required it, so the continental writers of his time completely abandoned the traditional belief in Christendom or Europe as a structure above or at least additional to its component states.

Every being ought to do...

Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

Except by name, Jean Paul...

Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,—imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics, — "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of—the air!"

If honor were profitable, everybody...

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

There is nothing man desires...

There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.

Montaigne puts not self-satisfied understanding...

Montaigne puts not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

If...it be a thing external...

If...it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.

These things, which we state...

These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.

It is the failing of...

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

Be pleased to consider, that...

Be pleased to consider, that obstinacy enslaves the Soul, and clips the wings which God gave Her for flight, and discovery.

One [method] is by a...

One [method] is by a Watch to keep time exactly. But, by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a watch hath not yet been made.

The New Deal is a...

The New Deal is a phase of the transition process from capitalism to managerial society. The New Deal is not Stalinism and not Nazism. But no candid observer, friend or enemy of the New Deal, can deny that in terms of economic, social, political, ideological changes from traditional capitalism, the New Deal moves in the same direction as Stalinism and Nazism.

He that dies in extreme...

He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.

Knowledge is the plague of...

Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.

Man is a tool-using animal...Without...

Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Since we're all going to...

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

As I ever disclaimed alchemy...

As I ever disclaimed alchemy in the vulgar sense, so I thought fit to let the alchemists know it, lest — in the perusal of my writings — they should fix a construction to some passages which cannot suit with the judgment of their author.

A fool is always troublesome,...

A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome ; he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long.

To live your brief life...

To live your brief life rightly, isn't that enough? (Hays translation)

Everyone must destroy their life....

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

Misery which, through long ages,...

Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.

All systems of morality are...

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion. At very most, such a mind will consent to use past experience as a basis for its future actions.

The country on the sea...

The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids from Argos...The whole is now called Macedonia, and at the time of the invasion of Sitalces, Perdiccas, Alexander's son, was the reigning king.

Suppose that we could arrange...

Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?

The world is so possessed...

The world is so possessed by the power of what is and the efforts of adjustment to it, that the adolescent's rebellion, which once fought the father because his practices contradicted his own ideology, can no longer crop up. … Psychologically, the father is … replaced by the world of things.

Be like a rocky promontory...

Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint."

Being of opinion that the...

Being of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a sect as the Quakers were very well deserving the curiosity of every thinking man, I resolved to make myself acquainted with them, and for that purpose made a visit to one of the most eminent of that sect in England, who, after having been in trade for thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune, and to his desires, and withdrew to a small but pleasant retirement in the country, not many miles from London. Here it was that I made him my visit. His house was small, but neatly built, and with no other ornaments but those of decency and convenience.

The initial revelation of any...

The initial revelation of any monastery: everything is nothing. Thus begin all mysticisms. It is less than one step from nothing to God, for God is the positive expression of nothingness.

His decipherment of Nature might...

His decipherment of Nature might be crude, yet he had the courage to insist that the mechanical sense could be made of the workings of Nature, throughout the realms of physics, chemistry, and even physiology. By reasserting the unity and rationality of Nature, he did as much as any man to put seventeenth-century scientists back on the intellectual road first trodden by the Greeks.

No nobler feeling than this...

No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.

The greatest saving one can...

The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world — and to pay attention to man.

By day certainly the combatants...

By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?

The craftiest wiles are too...

The craftiest wiles are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.

All things in nature become...

All things in nature become identical with the phenomena they present when submitted to the practices of our laboratories, whose problems no less than their apparatus express in turn the problems and interests of society as it is. This view may be compared with that of a criminologist maintaining that trustworthy knowledge of a human being can be obtained only by the well-tested and streamlined examining methods applied to a suspect in the hands of the metropolitan police.

Find time still to be...

Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.

Heaven made virtue; man, the...

Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance.

Once man loses his faculty...

Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.