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Quotes by Philosopher
"First impression is not the last reflection of a true friend, so if you are head over heels for someone who just bought you a cake, you'd better think twice before devouring your misery."
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"Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy."
15
"The eloquence of the pen is just as sharp as the point of a sword."
15
"Success is climbing all the way up failure's steep ladder."
15
"You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended."
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"Frog in the mud is happier than the man, because it has no ambition to reach the stars!"
15
"The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it."
15
"So many had burned opportunities in the name of postponement, believing that another opportunity will arise. They fail to seize the spur of the moment, without thinking that maybe, that could be their last chance to actualize their long nurtured dreams. Achieving your heart desires in this century requires your alertness, diligence, and overcoming the hindrances that procrastination brings."
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"Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble."
15
"For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service of thought."
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"The clearest mirror in the universe is not made of glass, but of a loving soul."
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"It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived-forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position."
15
"Tis the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
15
"So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief, for you're travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way."
15
"No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes."
15
"If the caterpillar could not see beyond his present state, he would never become a butterfly."
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"Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately."
15
"Don't you realize," Merlin said to his pupil, "that the history of the universe has brought us here to this second?"
15
"It happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an "assault upon society" and is branded as "Socialism."
15
"How to love is the real question. We all know to love and to keep loving more, but man's confusion comes from the differing opinions on how to love. The Church will always be accused of not loving enough by human standards - which should be its motivation to love more - however that is, in many cases, because its focus is and should also be to love on levels of eternal significance. This is the level of love that will inevitably go unnoticed by those who do not believe in eternity."
15
"Your presence only truly matters to people who feel your absence."
15
"The word of man is the most durable of all material."
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"The difficult problems in life always start off being simple. Great affairs always start off being small."
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"Good intentions but bad results, bad results but lessons learned. There is a dark corner on every task beautiful and a beautiful corner on every task dark."
15
"A great storm is like a sunny day to a person of great faith. A gentle wind is like a great storm to a person of great fear."
15
"The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd."
15
"Our parents would not be 'The best parents in the world' (to us) if they were not our parents."
15
"If you fail a thousand times, find a thousand and one ways to succeed."
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"What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other. You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys."
15
"Pray patiently. Pray purposefully. Pray painstakingly. Pray perfectly."
15
"Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see."
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"Nothing amuses people more than a cocky guy who starts losing."
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"It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description."
15
"Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it."
15
"Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness."
15
"What may intimidate a man is a woman who thinks with her mind before she feels with her heart. Nevertheless what determines the strength in the man is his ability to accept one when he sees one."
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"You are a foreigner in an actual world, a human co-worker, a truth, a divine word, and a perfect mistake."
15
"A bird must rely on its own wings if it is to conquer the sky."
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"The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense."
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"Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity."
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"When a woman is romantically subdued, all she does at that moment is under the influence of her desires."
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"When the sun rises it casts a shadow on what does not shine as bright as it."
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"To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness."
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"A slap from God is better than a handshake from the devil."
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"February 13, 1936I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps...Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want to write about men, should I stop talking about the countryside? If the sky or light attract me, shall I forget the eyes or voices of those I love? Each time I am given the elements of a friendship, the fragments of an emotion, never the emotion or the friendship itself."
15
"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
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