Quotes About Philosophy

Let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my garden not being finished. (tr. Charles Cotton)

The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.

Death is not one of our social managements; it is a scene with one character.

A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. -from By diverse means we arrive at the same end

Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked. Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy.

Que sçay-je? (What do I know?)

there is nothing we can do longer than think, no activity to which we can devote ourselves more regularly nor more easily:

I myself am more ready to distort a fine saying in order to patch it on to me than to distort the thread of my argument to go in search of one. [A]

is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.Nat. Hist., ii. 7.]

We are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be. -from Our feelings reach out beyond us

Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I must borrow it from Cicero.  I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason.  I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom.

que a morte me encontre plantando minhas couves, mas despreocupado com ela e ainda mais com minha horta inacabada.

Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform.

Death is inevitable: does it matter when it comes? When Socrates was told that the Thirty Tyrants had condemned him to death, he retorted, 'And nature, them!'. How absurd to anguish over our passing into freedom from all anguish.

I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me how to die well and live well.

D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l'homme quelque instinct à l'inhumanité

So much din from so many philosophical brainboxes! Trust in your philosophy now! Boast that you are the one who has found the lucky bean in your festive pudding!

That philosopher who orders us to conceal ourselves and to care for no one but ourselves and who wishes us to remain unknown to others, wants us even less to be held in honour and glory by them. He also advised Idomeneus in no wise to govern his actions by reputation or by common opinion, except to avoid such incidental disadvantages as the contempt of men might bring him.10 Those words are infinitely true, in my opinion, and are reasonable.

To understand the essence and workings of insanity, Gallus Vibius strained his mind so that he tore his judgment from its seat and could never get it back again: he could boast he became mad through wisdom.1

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.