Quotes About Philosophy

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.

Character is destiny

Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.

The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.

As Hegel defines it: Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is before us. ... Reason is the negation of the negative. ... Reason, and Reason alone, contains its own corrective.

We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,' was his mildly cadaverous reply.

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

For backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the nothing we dread to be.

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.

In this world, headwinds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim).

On Ralph Waldo Emerson)I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now -but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving and coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.

Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?

and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.

Skuta var topptung som en middagsløs student med hodet fullt av Aristoteles.

A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.

Over Descartian vortices you hover.

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.

The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.