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4 months 3 weeks ago
For in the beginning of the world He gave to Adam himself and Eve a law, that they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the midst of paradise; but that, if they did contrariwise, by death they were to die. Which law had continued enough for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognise in embryo all the precepts which afterwards sprouted forth when given through Moses; that is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God from thy whole heart and out of thy whole soul; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal; False witness thou shalt not utter; Honour thy father and mother; and, That which is another’s, shalt thou not covet. For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise, as the womb of all the precepts of God. In short, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have contravened His precept; if they had habitually loved their neighbour—that is, themselves—they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and thus would not have committed murder upon themselves, by falling from immortality, by contravening God’s precept; from theft also they would have abstained, if they had not stealthily tasted of the fruit of the tree, nor had been anxious to skulk beneath a tree to escape the view of the Lord their God; nor would they have been made partners with the falsehood-asseverating devil, by believing him that they would be “like God;” and thus they would not have offended God either, as their Father, who had fashioned them from clay of the earth, as out of the womb of a mother; if they had not coveted another’s, they would not have tasted of the unlawful fruit.
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Chapter II.—The Law Anterior to Moses.
4 months 3 weeks ago
The result of what has been said is, in general, that the wealth and power of all nations depending so much on their trade and commerce, and every nation being...in such different circumstances of advantage or disadvantage in the pursuit of this common interest; a good government, and therefore the government of a patriot king, will be directed constantly to make the most of every advantage that nature has given, or art can procure towards the improvement of trade and commerce. And this is one of the principal criterions, by which we are to judge whether governors are in the true interest of the people, or not.It results, in particular, that Great Britain might improve her wealth and power in a proportion superior to that of any nation who can be deemed her rival, if the advantages she has were as wisely cultivated, as they will be in the reign of a patriot king.
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pp. 186-187
4 months 3 weeks ago
For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post].
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VII, 45
4 months 3 weeks ago
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!
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Life of Frederick the Great, Bk. XVI, ch. 1.
4 months 3 weeks ago
Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not “fanatical.” That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Now there was a young gentleman which had married a merchant's wife. And having a little wanton money, which him thought burned out the bottom of his purse, in the first year of his wedding took his wife with him and went over sea, for none other errand but to see Flanders and France and ride out one summer in those countries.
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Works (c. 1530) | Sometimes paraphrased "A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse."
4 months 3 weeks ago
Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.
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p. 9.
4 months 3 weeks ago
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. (Hays translation)
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VIII, 33
4 months 3 weeks ago
Again, and again, we say, the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.
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Characteristics.
4 months 3 weeks ago
Notwithstanding I acknowledge the schoolmen ingenious: they conceive their principles irregular, and prescribe rules for method, though they want matter.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
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Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, p. 120, as quoted in Socinianism And Arminianism : Antitrinitarians, Calvinists, And Cultural Exchange in Sevente
4 months 3 weeks ago
I shall present a theory - which I call "the theory of the managerial revolution." During the past century, dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of "theories of history" have been elaborated. All of the theories, with the exception of those few which approximate to the theory of the managerial revolution, boil down to two and only two. The first of these predicts that capitalism will continue for an indefinite, but long, time, if not forever:' that is, that the major institutions of capitalist society, or at least most of them, will not be radically changed. The second predicts that capitalist society will be replaced by socialist society. The theory of the managerial revolution predicts that capitalist society will be replaced by "managerial society," that, in fact, the transition from capitalist society to managerial society is already well under way.
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p. 7, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 12-13
4 months 3 weeks ago
All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.
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IX, 19
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Maybe suffering has no more justification than life.

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4 months 3 weeks ago
Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Fate is not in man but around him.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
The Holy Spirit, moving upon the chaos — which action some divines compare to the incubation of a hen upon her eggs, did together with his heat communicate other manifold influences to the matter.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
A preacher must have some intelligence to charm the people by his florid style, by his exhilarating system of morality, by the repetition of his figures of speech, his brilliant remarks and vivid descriptions ; but, after all, he has not too much of it, for if he possessed some of the right quality he would neglect these extraneous ornaments, unworthy of the Gospel, and preach naturally, forcibly, and like a Christian.
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Of The Pulpit (8)
4 months 3 weeks ago
Let this always be plain to thee, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with all things on the top of a mountain, or on the sea-shore, or wherever thou chooses to be. For thou wilt find just what Plato says, Dwelling within the walls of the city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.
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X, 23
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Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be "happy"? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly constituted,—by victorious Analysis. The stomach that is empty shall be filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but joyous Wheat-fields, one would think, cannot come to grow untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—unless indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all, then surely—no one will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but by sufficiently victorious Analysis, "human life may be indefinitely lengthened," and men get rid of Death, as they have already done of the Devil? We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the Devil.
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Pt. I, Bk. II, ch. 1.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

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(This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores).
4 months 3 weeks ago
I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.
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Book II, 2.35-[1]-[3]
4 months 3 weeks ago
Poverty and inequality like this should cause Europeans to cringe in horror, especially since (we have it on good authority) there is no safety net in America, no unemployment benefits, no retirement, no assistance for the destitute--not the slightest bit of social solidarity. In the U.S. "only the most fortunate have the right to medical care and to grow old with dignity," as one writer recently put it in Libération. University courses are reserved only for those who can pay, which partly explains the "low level of education" in the benighted US.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.
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p. 150.
4 months 3 weeks ago
I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.
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XII, 3
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Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Life is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.
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{{cite book
4 months 3 weeks ago
They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds! This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the "discoverability" is the only error here.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! — by such narrow ways — ?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
I think, therefore, that we ought to take great numbers of hoplites, both from Athens and from our allies, and not merely from our subjects, but also any we may be able to get for love or money in the Peloponnesus, and great numbers also of archers and slingers, to oppose the Sicilian horse.
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Book VI, 6.22-[1]
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The discovery of truth by slow progressive meditation is wisdom. Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.
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No. 93
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Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.
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p. 29.
4 months 3 weeks ago
I'm constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self....How much credence we give to the opinions our peers have of us and how little to our very own!
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XII. 4
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Anything serves as a pretext for the wicked.
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p. 42
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No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" — we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to Truth; — "living in a vain show." Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.
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"Historical Murder", as translated by Anthony Bower
4 months 3 weeks ago
If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou wert accused by the ass; if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf; if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner; wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury; wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse; wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life; all thy safety were remotion, and thy defence, absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? and what beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!
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Timon, scene iii
4 months 3 weeks ago
Since the term command comprises the term law the first is the simpler as well as the larger of the two. But simple as it is, it admits of explanation. And, since it is the key to the sciences of jurisprudence and morals, its meaning should be analyzed with. precision.
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p. 6
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Society depends upon women. The nations who confine them are unsociable.
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p. 145
4 months 3 weeks ago
Reality is a creation of our excesses.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the inarticulate deeps.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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"The Task of the Translator," translated by Harry Zohn
4 months 3 weeks ago
I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.
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4 months 3 weeks ago
The physicists of Gilbert's time had recourse to mechanism infrequently, and its effective explanations touched only a few disconnected phenomena. The virtuosity, inventiveness, and optimism of Descartes, however, and the counter-example of latter- day hermetists like Robert Fludd, persuaded many that mechanical models offered the only hope for a precise and comprehensible physics. Expectations rose. Physicists demanded more from models, perhaps even a complete fit with phenomena, with little or no negative analogy.Gilbert's countrymen , diplomat and philosopher, and Thomas Browne, physician diplomat and literateur, freed his watery humor objections of Cabeo by concocting it into an unctuous, elastic vapor. Such a vapor could allow Cabeo's rebounds, occasion the reattractions of ricocheting that Digby noticed, and — in its elastic contractions — draw the electric as well as the chaff. This last inference was first made about 1660, by the unconventional Cartesian fellow traveller , S.J., 'a veritable giant in science' and a liberal and candid physicist whenever his Society's obligation to combat Copernicans did interfer.
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John L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th centuries: A study of early modern physics. Univ of California Press, 1979. p. 195 | The quote "a veritable giant in science," originates from: Elise C. Otté (1881). Denmark and Iceland, p. 156
4 months 3 weeks ago
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
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Il est encore plus facile de juger de l'esprit d'un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses. (It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers) — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis (1764-1830), Maximes et réflexions sur

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