Quotes

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The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. Henry David Thoreau Walden None transcendentalist, universal beauty, Nature, Poetry Perceptive 239 239
Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition. Plotinus The Enneads Knowledge Neoplatonism Wise 172 172
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. Plutarch Parallel Lives Education mind, curiosity, education Wise 201 201
If I admire the exegete because he provides good explanations, and if I can understand and myself interpret the text and if, quite frankly, everything falls to my lot except the fact of making use of these writings in life, would I have become anything other than a grammarain instead of a philosopher?...the fact of just simply reading the writings of Chrysippus or of explaining them on the request of somebody else, and of not making use of them in life, is reprehensible Simplicius Commentary on Epictetus' Enchiridion None Ancient Greek Philosophy Actionable 241 241
Language develops only upon the death of individuals Bryce Parain L’Invention de la langue Spiritual Exercises The Ego Selfless 205 205
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing Socrates Plato's Dialogues wisdom and ignorance Ancient Greek Philosophy Wise 242 242
Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and embrace the universe; and then compare what we call human life with infinity... Seneca Letters from a Stoic Stoicism The Universal Perspective Selfless 183 183
A truly new and truly original book would be one which made people love old truths Vauvenargues Reflections et maximes Old Truths Exegesis, Originality Ancient 206 206
I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent than the extent of my power or possessions. Plutarch Parallel Lives Philosophy ancient greek philosophy Philosophical 174 174
He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand Seneca Letters from a Stoic Stoicism Premeditating on Future Evils Prepared 188 188
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most. Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment Change, Fear, Comfort Zone Fiction Courage 175 175
What is finally most benefical to the human being as a human being? Is it to disourse on language, or on being and non-being? Or is it not rather to learn how to live a human life? Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life Philosophy Philosophy Human 202 202
Literature is news that stays news Ezra Pound A Retrospect current events, timelessness american criticism, modernist poetry Ancient 173 173
If one wants to know the nature of a thing, one must examine it in its pure state, since every addition to a thing is an obstacle to the knowledge of that thing. When you examine it, then, remove from it everything that is not itself; better still *remove all your stains from yourself and examine yourself*, and you will have faith in your immortality. Plotinus The Enneads Neoplatonism The All, The Ego Philosophical 168 168
Where there have been powerful societies, governments, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force its way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart: and that annoys the tyrants Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations None The Autonomous Individual Autonomous 169 169
Ordinary people don't know how much time and effort it takes to learn how to read. I've spent eighty years at it, and I still can't say that I've reached my goal. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Conversations with Eckermann The Difficult Spiritual Exercise of Reading Reading, Knowledge Humble 166 166
"Come and listen to me read my commentaries...I will explain Chrysippus to you like no one else can, and I'll provide a complete analysis of his entire text...If necessary, I can even add the views of Antipater and Archedemos"...So it's for this, is it, that young men are to leave their fatherlands and their own parents: to come and listen to you explain words? Trifling little words? Epictetus Discourses Against Reading, Words, Exegesis Stoicism Human 167 167
What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest post-modernism, nihilism american fiction, essayist sentimental 170 170
We can perhaps get a better idea [of this spiritual exercise] if we understand it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view - linked to the senses and the body - so as to rise to the universal, normative viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one's *individuality and passions*, in order to look at things from the perspective of universality and objectivity. Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life Spiritual Exercises The Ego Spiritual 178 178
The wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know all this—this wonder is itself the most profound and most difficult question that one can pose. It is the essence of our most fundamental concern, and it is what all metaphysical inquiry seeks to uncover. Martin Heidegger The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude Existence and Being The Universal Perspective Perceptive 181 181
I thought of Plato's words and felt them suddenly in my heart: all in all, nothing human is worth taking very seriously; nevertheless. Friedrich Nietzsche Human, All Too Human The Universal Perspective 6000 feet beyond man and time Philosophical 184 184
The purification of the soul, its separation as far as possible from the body and its gathering itself together within itself, is the true practice of philosophy. Hence philosophy consists of a lived concrete exercise and not of a theory or conceptual edifice: The theoretical philosophical discourse is completely different from the lived exercises by which the soul purifies itself of its passions and spiritually separates itself from the body Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life Philosophy Philosophy Selfless 186 186
Persuade yourself that each new day that dawns will be your last; then you will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude. Recognize all the value of each moment of time which is added on as if it were happening by an incredible stroke of luck Horace Epistles Stoicism Meditation on Death Grateful 187 187
Only he who is capable of a genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with himself, and the converse is equally true...From this perspective, every spiritual exercise is a dialogue, insofar as it is an exercise of authentic presence, to oneself and to others. Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life dialogue spirituality, philosophy genuine 197 197
To have learned theoretically that death is not an evil does not suffice to no longer fear it. In order for this truth to be able to penetrate to the depths of one's being, so that it is not believed only for a brief moment, but becomes an unshakable conviction, so that it is always "ready," "at hand," "present to mind," so that it is a "habitus of the soul" as the Ancients said, one must exercise oneself constantly and without respite - "night and day," as Cicero said. Pierre Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life Philosophy Ancient Greek Philosophy None 200 200
A carpenter does not come up to you and say "Listen to me discourse about the art of carpentry," but he makes a contract for a house and builds it...Do the same thing yourself. Eat like a man, drink like a man...get married, have children, take part in civic life, learn how to put up with insults, and tolerate other people... Epictetus Enchiridion Philosophy Stoicism Actionable 199 199
You increase yourself when you reject everything other than the All, and when you have rejected it, the All will be present to you...The All had no need to *come* in order to be present. If it is *not* present, the reason is that it is *you* who have distanced yourself from it. "Distancing yourself" does not mean leaving it to go someplace else - for it would be there, too. Rather it means turning away from the All, despite the fact that it is there. Plotinus The Enneads Neoplatonism The All, The Ego Selfless 185 185
Watch and see the courses of the stars as if you are running alongside them, and continually dwell in your mind upon the changes of the elements into one another; for these imaginations wash away the foulness of life on the earth. When you are reasoning about mankind, look upon earthly things below as if from some vantage point above them. Marcus Aurelius Meditations Stoicism The View from Above, The Universal Perspective Selfless 191 191
The fear of death distresses a man with a guilty conscience, but the man with a good witness within himself longs for death as for life.’ Count no man truly wise who, because of this temporal life, enslaves his mind to timidity and fear. St. Isaac the Syrian Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian None Courage 353 353
Someone who has actually tasted the truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered among men to be zealous for truth has not yet learned what truth is really like; once he has learned it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf. The gift of God and of knowledge of Him is not a cause of turmoil and clamor; rather this gift is entirely filled with a peace in which the Spirit, love, and humility reside. The following is a sign of the coming of the Spirit: the person on whom the Spirit has overshadowed is made perfect in these very virtues. God is reality. The person whose mind has become aware of God does not possess a tongue with which to speak, but God resides in the heart with great serenity. He experiences no stirring of zeal or argumentativeness, nor is he stirred by anger. St. Isaac the Syrian Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian None Contentiousness Meek 356 356
It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for, and often finding, patterns. Now I said that an intelligence can jump out of its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However, a little prompting will often suffice. For example, a human being who is reading a book may grow sleepy. Instead of continuing to read until the book is finished, he is just as likely to put the book aside and turn off the light. He has stepped “out of the system” and yet it seems the most natural thing in the world to us. Or, suppose Person A is watching television when Person B comes in the room, and shows evident displeasure with the situation. Person A may think he understands the problem, and try to remedy it by exiting the present system (that television program), and flipping the channel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to “exit the system” - namely to turn the television off! Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples’ lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from! Douglas R. Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid None Cognitive Science Intelligent 354 354
You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. [...] On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; [...] but out comes the whole majesty of him also. John Ruskin On Art and Life None Formalism, Exactness 355 355
Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction Mikhail Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays None 363 363
It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's eye closed. John Stuart Mill Coleridge None 357 357
Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery William Carlos Williams Poems None Poetry Introspective 358 358
What Labels Me, Negates Me Clarice Lispector A Paixão segundo G.H. None 359 359
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning None Free Will Resilient 360 360
With humility you attract the grace of God. You surrender yourself to the love of God, to worship and to prayer. But even if you do all in the world, you achieve nothing if you haven't acquired humility. St. Porphyrios Wounded by Love None Humility 361 361
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Soren Kierkegaard Either Or None 362 362
In our hunt for the final theory, physicists are more like hounds than hawks, sniffing around on the ground for traces of the beauty we expect in the laws of nature, but we do not seem to be able to see the path to truth from the heights of philosophy. Steven Weinberg Dreams of A Final Theory None Modes of Perception 365 365
If you consult any dictionary you will see that the word "exactitude" is not among the synonyms of faithfulness. There are rather loyalty, honesty, respect, and devotion Umberto Eco How to Write a Thesis None None Educated 368 368
The writer's job is not to solve problems but to state them correctly. Anton Checkhov Letters on Art and Artists None Writing None 367 367
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say Flannery O'Conner The Habit of Being None None None 364 364
The opposite of a small truth is a lie, but the opposite of a great truth may very well be another great truth Niels Bohr None None Paradox, Complementarity None 366 366