The world is nothing but...

The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.'

The cucumber is bitter? Then...

The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know. (Hays translation)

Civil government does by its...

Civil government does by its nature include much that is mechanical, and must be treated accordingly. We term it indeed, in ordinary language, the Machine of Society, and talk of it as the grand working wheel from which all private machines must derive, or to which they must adapt, their movements.

Man cannot do without beauty,...

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.

If thou wilt kick and...

If thou wilt kick and fling, I shall say with the cardinal: Etiam asinus meus recaldtrat (My ass also kicks up his heels) for I value no man's Censure.

The Antients, as we learn...

The Antients, as we learn from Pappus, in vain endeavour'd at the Trisection of an Angle, and the finding out of two mean Proportionals by a right line and a Circle. Afterwards they began to consider the Properties of several other Lines. as the Conchoid, the Cissoid, and the Conick Sections, and by some of these to solve these Problems. At length, having more throughly examin'd the Matter, and the Conick Sections being receiv'd into Geometry, they distinguish'd Problems into three Kinds: viz. (1.) Into Plane ones, which deriving their Original from Lines on a Plane, may be solv'd by a right Line and a Circle; (2.) Into Solid ones, which were solved by Lines deriving their Original from the Consideration of a Solid, that is, of a Cone; (3.) And Linear ones, to the Solution of which were requir'd Lines more compounded. And according to this Distinction, we are not to solve solid Problems by other Lines than the Conick Sections; especially if no other Lines but right ones, a Circle, and the Conick Sections, must be receiv'd into Geometry. But the Moderns advancing yet much farther, have receiv'd into Geometry all Lines that can be express'd by Æquations, and have distinguish'd, according to the Dimensions of the Æquations, those Lines into Kinds; and have made it a Law, that you are not to construct a Problem by a Line of a superior Kind, that may be constructed by one of an inferior one. In the Contemplation of Lines, and finding out their Properties, I like their Distinction of them into Kinds, according to the Dimensions thy Æquations by which they are defin'd. But it is not the Æquation, but the Description that makes the Curve to be a Geometrical one.

The Commons, faithful to their...

The Commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.

Is it not better to...

Is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?

I don't understand why we...

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

Wonder is the basis of...

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Maman used to say that...

Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.

But as the power of...

But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an objective, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were established almost everywhere...

It is a sad thing...

It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well, nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.

And finally remember that nothing...

And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives...

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection.

There are depths in man...

There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?

To become god is merely...

To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.

I have often before now...

I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire...

The suffering that animals undergo...

The suffering that animals undergo while being caught and eaten may be intense and the process by which they are killed may last for a quarter of an hour or more. Because the number of predators worldwide is enormous, and because, like us, many of them must eat with considerable frequency, the aggregate amount of suffering in the world at any time that is caused by predation is unimaginably vast.

Bourgeois society is ruled by...

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Soon you'll be ashes or...

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.

The Quakers date their epoch...

The Quakers date their epoch from Christ, who, according to them, was the first Quaker. Religion, say they, was corrupted almost immediately after His death, and remained in that state of corruption about sixteen hundred years. But there were always a few of the faithful concealed in the world, who carefully preserved the sacred fire, which was extinguished in all but themselves; till at length this light shone out in England in 1642. It was at the time when Great Britain was distracted by intestine wars, which three or four sects had raised in the name of God, that one George Fox, a native of Leicestershire, and son of a silk-weaver, took it into his head to preach the Word, and, as he pretended, with all the requisites of a true apostle; that is, without being able either to read or write. He was a young man, about twenty-five years of age, of irreproachable manners, and religiously mad. He was clad in leather from head to foot, and travelled from one village to another, exclaiming against the war and the clergy.

The poor maidservant who used...

The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.

It is frequently stated that...

It is frequently stated that Descartes was the first to apply algebra to geometry. This statement is inaccurate, for Vieta and others had done this before him. Even the Arabs sometimes used algebra in connection with geometry.

Innumerable men had passed by,...

Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;—till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;—is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!

Let us be understood. If...

Let us be understood. If the Japanese surrender after the destruction of Hiroshima, having been intimidated, we will rejoice. But we refuse to see anything in such grave news other than the need to argue more energetically in favor of a true international society, in which the great powers will not have superior rights over small and middle-sized nations, where such an ultimate weapon will be controlled by human intelligence rather than by the appetites and doctrines of various states. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.

Their swaying bodies reflected the...

Their swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within the reach of safety or just on the point of destruction.

Him, who incessantly laughs in...

Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

In the face of the...

In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, … the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.

Everything is in a state...

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

The best written book is...

The best written book is a receipt for a pottage.

Lord, give me the capacity...

Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun.

A spontaneous, passionate, yet just,...

A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there.

I rebel — therefore we...

I rebel — therefore we exist.

It is a known fact...

It is a known fact that almost all revolutions have been the work, not of the common people, but of the aristocracy, and especially of the decayed part of the aristocracy.

Precisely by inculcating a critical...

Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.

One of the curious psychological...

One of the curious psychological facts, in connection with the various ways in which various minds function, is the fact that when in these days we seek to visualize, in some pictorial manner, our ultimate view of life, the images which are called up are geometrical or chemical rather than anthropomorphic. It is probable that even the most rational and logical among us as soon as he begins to philosophize at all is compelled by the necessity of things to form in the mind some vague pictorial representation answering to his conception of the universe. Most minds see the universe of their mental conception as something quite different from the actual stellar universe upon which we all gaze. Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement.

None have lived without shedding...

None have lived without shedding tears.

We are afraid of the...

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

It is the property of...

It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him.

A punishment that penalizes without...

A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.

Πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσιν.

Πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσιν.

Nothing that has ever happened...

Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past — which is to say, only a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l'ordre du jour — and that day is Judgement Day.

When mons. Descartes's philosophical Romance,...

When mons. Descartes's philosophical Romance, by the Elegance of its Style and the plausible Accounts of natural Phænomena, had overthrown the Aristotelian Physics, the World received but little Advantage by the Change: For instead of a few Pedants, who, most of them, being conscious of their Ignorance, concealed it with hard Words and pompous Terms; a new Set of Philosophers started up, whose lazy Disposition easily fell in with a Philosophy, that required no Mathematicks to understand it, and who taking a few Principles for granted, without examining their Reality or Consistence with each other, fancied they could solve all Appearances mechanically by Matter and Motion; and, in their smattering Way, pretended to demonstrate such things, as perhaps Cartesius himself never believed ; his Philosophy (if he bad been in earnest) being unable to stand the test of the Geometry which he was Master of.

Not that I at all...

Not that I at all disallow the use of reasoning upon experiments, or the endeavouring to discern as early as we can the confederations, and differences, and tendencies of things: for such an absolute suspension of the exercise of reasoning were exceeding troublesome, if not impossible. And, as in that rule of arithmetic, which is commonly called ' by proceeding upon a conjecturally-supposed number, as if it were that, which we inquire after, we are wont to come to the knowledge of the true number sought for; so in physiology it is sometimes conducive to the discovery of truth, to permit the understanding to make an hypothesis, in order to the explication of this or that difficulty, that by examining how far the phænomena are, or are not, capable of being solved by that hypothesis, the understanding may, even by its own errors, be instructed.

Voltaire was the cleverest of...

Voltaire was the cleverest of all past and present men; but a great man is something more, and this he surely was not.

Whether or not there exists...

Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves — that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it.

And Beasts that have Deliberation,...

And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will.

For being a man worth...

For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneeringly flung away.

He who does wrong is...

He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.