Quotes About Philosophy

Er een eind aan maken: maar zou dat niet haast een beetje heldhaftig zijn voor een 'paljas'? Het zal er wel op uitdraaien, ben ik bang, dat ik verder ga met leven, met eten en slapen, en me met het een of ander zoet te houden; en misschien zal ik er zo langzamerhand aan wennen en in schikken een 'ongelukkige en belachelijke figuur' te zijn.

La Belleza, Fedro, tenlo muy presente, solo la Belleza es a la vez visible y divina, y por ello es también el camino de lo sensible, es, mi pequeño Fedro, el camino del artista hacia el espíritu.

But then he came across a long chapter that he read from the first word to the last, with his lips tightly closed, his eyebrows pursed, concentrating—his face registering a total, almost deathlike look of earnest concentration—oblivious to every trace of life stirring around him. This chapter was entitled: "Concerning Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our Essential Nature." He

immerse yourself in the great riddle of this dream of life here on earth. It is as nothing since it ends and dissolves into nothingness. Yet everywhere in this nothingness, quickening it to life, the infinite is at hand!

No, when it came to the ultimate and highest questions, there was no help from outside - no mediation, no absolution, no soothing consolation. Every man had to untangle the riddle on his own, had to work diligently at it, at hot speed, all by himself; before it was too late, he must either achieve some clear readiness for death, or die in despair.

Fish gotta swim Bird gotta fly Man gotta sit and say Why why why

Lyotard remarked that post-Modern artists often function as philosophers. They may deal with issues of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as many influential critics today approach art through philosophy.

Confucious and the Madman (excerpt) The cinnamon tree is edible: so it is cut down! The lacquer tree is profitable: they maim it. Every man knows how useful it is to be useful. No one seems to know How useful it is to be useless.

Where self-interest is the bond, The friendship is dissolved When calamity comes. Where Tao is the bond, Friendship is made perfect By calamity.

To really know our 'nothingness' we must also love it. And we cannot love it unless we see that it is good. And we cannot see that it is good unless we accept it.

All theology is a kind of birthday Each one who is born Comes into the world as a question For which old answers Are not sufficient…

This is IT! This is the furthest yet! Who can reach it? I can comprehend the absence of Being But who can comprehend the absence of Nothing? If now, on top of all this, Non-Being IS, Who can comprehend it?

So much depends on our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however pure and perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really is. Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him. We

I think poets owe a special adoration to the third person of the Holy Trinity, for by these tongues of fire all men are made poets and philosophers, and that is the way Christ would have it on earth.

That is precisely why you will miss all the deepest meaning of Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest if you reduce their vital and creative statements about life and men to the dry, matter-of-fact terms of history, or ethics, or some other science. They belong to a different order.

In those days I learned the name Hesperides, and it was from these things that I unconsciously built up the vague fragments of a religion and of a philosophy, which remained hidden and implicit in my acts, and which, in due time, were to assert themselves in a deep and all-embracing attachment to my own judgment and my own will and a constant turning away from subjection, towards the freedom of my own ever-changing horizons.

by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves. All

we follow nothing but our natures, our own philosophies, our own level of ethics, we will end up in hell.

Your challenge, then, is to create a religion of your own by being secular in a religious way, or religious in a secular way. You can learn how to see the secular from a religious angle, and vice versa.

It might be better to be more of a skeptic than a believer, less open-minded and more critical. The problem in the modern spiritual

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognise it and just go on as before.

It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a million years. But if that is true, then by the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now. In particular, it does not matter now that in million years nothing we do now will matter.

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.