Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.
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Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
6
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
6
It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.
11
You can’t do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.
6
What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events?
8
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
9
To the mean all becomes mean.
7
To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.
11
He that hopes no good fears no ill.
5
To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.
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The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.
5
Man is neither angel nor beast, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
9
Look round the habitable world: how few / Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
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We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.
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What rapture, oh, it is to know / A good thing when you see it / And having seen a good thing, oh, / What rapture tis to flee it.
16
There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.
7
I see / that everywhere among the race of men / it is the tongue that wins and not the deed.
8
The persuasion of a friend is a strong thing.
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People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
7
Too much zeal offends / where indirection works.
9
Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.
10
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.
6
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
4
It is the eye which makes the horizon.
4
The field cannot well be seen from within the field.
4
It is very much easier to divide your outlook on the world into two halves, to say that you know this belongs to the daily half and this belongs to the Sunday half.
9
What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.
10
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures / Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, / One to show a woman when he loves her!
9
A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature.
4
A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.
5
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
9
Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.
7
He was a lot like those Currier and Ives prints which, having outgrown them, one then laps the field of Sensibility to approach again from behind and see as “wonderful.”
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Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in com
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To smell, though well, is to stink.
7
The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.
5
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
7
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, / Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor shall be.
9
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
11
We shall never have friends, if we expect to find them without fault.
5
He whose preoccupation is with excellence longs fervently to find rest in perfection; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?
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All mankind / Is born for perfection / And each shall attain it / Will he but follow / His nature’s duty.
6
The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.
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The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.
7
Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.
9
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
4
Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.
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