Quotes About Philosophy

Endless improvements turn out to be merely endless transformations, thus announcing the uncomfortable truth that identity is permanently insubstantial and mutable.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Simplicity is not a simple thing.

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

After the onslaught of loss, both personal and historical, do we really believe a good lunch and an aesthetic perception settles the matter?

You don't really want to crash down the whole universe just to satisfy your situational unease or your incapacity to see the whole picture, do you? You don't want a life based on your failure to understand life, right?

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

Be able to prove God? It would no longer be God. (Pouvoir prouver Dieu ? Ca ne serait plus Dieu)

Rail longer than train cars ; and the hope than our reasons. (Rail plus long que les wagons ; - Et l'espoir que nos raisons.)

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Oh gracious, why wasn't I born old and ugly?

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.

This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.

Such,' thought Mr. Pickwick, 'are the narrow views of those philosophers who, content with examining the things that lie before them, look not to the truths which are hidden beyond.

Mr. Parkes, finding himself in the position of having got into metaphysics without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered forth an apology and retreated from the argument.

Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip,

La represión es la única filosofía de efectos duraderos. La gran deferencia del miedo y de la esclavitud, amigo —dijo el marqués,— conservará a los perros obedientes al látigo mientras este techo —añadió mirando al techo— nos proteja del cielo.