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Quotes by Philosopher
"I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation."
49
"I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom."
49
"He who receives a great many letters demanding answer, sees himself as if engaged in a hopeless struggle of one man against the rest of the world."
49
"A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."
49
"Not only persons lose their way, but nations lose their way as well!"
49
"He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance."
49
"Present trials strengthen you for future blessings."
49
"Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected."
49
"There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth."
49
"He raised himself on his hands and looked at Irene's face: the nudity of that feminine body had risen into her face, the body had reabsorbed it, as nature reabsorbs forsaken gardens."
49
"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement."
49
"When we say that Philosophy tries to clear up the meanings of concepts we do not mean that it is simply concerned to substitute some long phrase for some familiar word."
49
"Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals."
49
"Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself."
Will,
49
"Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders."
49
"Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded."
49
"Liberty is the right to do what the law permits."
49
"I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience-a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself."
49
"Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle's remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost."
49
"Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them."
49
"The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain."
49
"No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!"
49
"Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect."
49
"Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness."
49
"It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst."
49
"To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery."
49
"Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another."
49
"If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world."
49
"Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all."
49
"It is better to win souls than to conquer nations."
49
"The past is gone, the future is uncertain; the present is the only place to be."
49
"Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand."
49
"Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within."
49
"The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning."
49
"Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time."
49
"Conscience without judgment is superstition."
49
"Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability."
49
"What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave."
49
"If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times."
Word,
49
"Be like the sun; warm to everyone, even your enemies."
49
"Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education."
49
"All men are Prophets or else God does not exist."
49
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