Quotes About Philosophy

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature that is to say, of his own life.

In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.

The disembodied spirit is immortal there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "Facts". They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope the same, without such opinion, despair.

Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is 'body' and that which is not 'body' is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.

What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body?

The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.

Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's arms and closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will be contented with its nature and destiny. (12)

It is easier to be tranquil about existence when you recognize the pointlessness of solemnity.

The koan describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second insists, "The wind is moving.

Whereas Buddhism believes it would be best if we could simply ignore the world, the source of our psychic pain, the Taoists wanted nothing so much as to have complete union with this same world.

The original teachings of the Buddha are more a philosophy than a religion, for they admit no supreme god, nor do they propose any salvation other than that attainable through human diligence. The aim is temporal happiness, to be realized through asceticism—which was taught as a practical means of turning one's back on the world and its incumbent pain.

There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named Liu Ling (ca. 221-330), habitually received guests while completely naked. His response to adverse comment was to declare, "I take the whole universe as my house and my own room as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter here into my trousers."14

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?