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Quotes by Philosopher
"There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable."
47
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
47
"Anyone that says his mind will be probably regarded a fool, but the true artist is not moved by the comments about the looks of his painting or remarks that are dreadfully sarcastic, but hearken now! That he who says what others want to hear hasn't said anything of his own."
47
"I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter."
47
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
47
"Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason."
47
"Real life is to most men a long second best a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible."
47
"Real geniuses would like that what we think of ourselves is true."
47
"Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need."
47
"After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity. I leave."
47
"God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you."
47
"If people did not compliment one another there would be little society."
47
"A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined."
47
"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom."
47
"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge."
47
"The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate."
47
"You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed."
47
"It isn't death, pain, exile or anything else you care to mention that accounts for the way we act, only our opinion about death, pain and the rest."
47
"Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself."
47
"Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality."
47
"All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy."
47
"The worship of power is an old religion."
47
"Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them."
47
"Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head."
47
"What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God."
47
"This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter."
47
"Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together."
47
"For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples."
47
"Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author."
47
"All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient."
47
"Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can go only so far but faith has no limits."
47
"He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest."
47
"Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes."
47
"Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven."
47
"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other."
47
"It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, - 'Aye,' asked he again, 'but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?' And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by."
47
"Forever' is an illusion that human beings promise each other when they are horny, or, trying to appear holy."
47
"Narcissism is as profitable to a model as scruffiness is to a homeless person."
47
"Nor is he liberal who gives with pain; for he would prefer the wealth to the noble act, and this is not characteristic of a liberal man. But no more will the liberal man take from wrong sources; for such taking is not characteristic of the man who sets no store by wealth."
47
"We call first truths those we discover after all the others."
47
"Biological death is only a mechanical problem, it can be solved and man can live millions of years! Do not believe in life after death! Seek for the life within the life! The medusa of Turritopsis nutricula is biologically immortal and this little creature is a big inspiration for us! He who thinks positively reaches his target!"
47
"If employment really cared about employees, people wouldn't have to work until retirement comes to their rescue."
47
"But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!"
47
"We first become salesmen as children in the confession booths of our parents."
47
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