Quotes About Philosophy

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger … LESSONS: Anonymous

Angels have no philosophy but love.

...dreams, and predictions of astrology.... ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside.

Whatever is — is best.

Confucius say: "Baseball wrong — man with four balls cannot walk."

Beauty isn't so much a matter of mug as a question of thinks.

...poetry is not greatly concerned with what a man thinks, but with what is so imbedded in his nature that it never occurs to him to question it: not a matter of which idea he holds, but of the depth at which he holds it.

But probably 2,000 years hence many beliefs of the wise of our day will have come to seem equally foolish. Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Books are embalmed minds.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.

Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

Do you count your birthdays thankfully?

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

If it weren't for death, life would be unbearable.

Man, bitterly examined, is merely a vehicle for units of nourishing combustion...

It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.

...we find what he says true, as far as we have experienced, and we can judge no further but by larger experience — for axioms in philosophy are not axioms till they have been proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived — forwards.

Clemens held that there was no such thing as an accident: that it was all forewritten in the day of the beginning; that every event, however slight, was embryonic in that first instant of created life, and immutably timed to its appearance in the web of destiny... invested in life's primal atom.

A fly does not mind dying in coconut cream.

Golf is long, and life is fleeting...

Screw up the vise as tightly as possible — you have rheumatism; give it another turn, and that is gout.