Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you limit yourself to sexual pleasure it's narcissistic. You don't connect with the other, you take what pleasure you want from them.
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.
Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.
Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.
The ultimate end...is not knowledge, but action. To be half right on time may be more important than to obtain the whole truth too late.
We must not feel a childish disgust at the investigations of the meaner animals. For there is something marvelous in all natural things.
Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and, consequently, imperishable.
When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war
Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.
It is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.
Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.
Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest
This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.
One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence
The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse.
A superior man may be made to go to the well, but he cannot be made to go down into it. He may be imposed upon, but he cannot be fooled.
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.
It was by music that the ancient kings gave elegant expression to their joy. By their armies and axes they gave the same to their anger.
When I am with others, they are my teachers. I can select their good points and follow them, and select their bad points and avoid them.
The Master said, I set my heart on the Way, base myself on virtue, lean upon benevolence for support and take my recreation in the arts.
The good man does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.
For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.
Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
When asked what was the proper time for supper: If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.
The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.
Anarcharsis, on learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, said that "the passengers were just that distance from death.
The true person is Not anyone in particular; But like the deep blue color Of the limitless sky, It is everyone, Everywhere in the world.
There are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth.
These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even to speak of himself or his own merits.
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.
I almost think that hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism. Where hope is lacking the soul dries up and withers.
In living off all the reflecting light furnished by poets, the I which dreams the reverie reveals itself not as poet but as poetizing I.
Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.
The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of the traditional forms.
All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.
Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.