Quotes About Philosophy

Contemplating the stars he has become accustomed to considering himself an anonymous and incorporeal dot, almost forgetting that he exists; to deal now with human beings, he cannot help involving himself, and he no longer knows where his self is to be found.

In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time.

we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

The book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; its subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist except when written, but whose absence is obscurely felt by that which exists, in its own incompleteness.

I will quote Cioran (who is not yet a classic but will become one): "While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning a tune on the flute. 'What good will it do you,' they asked, 'to know this tune before you die?

Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing but a zodiac of the mind's phantasms.

Will I ever be able to say, "Today it writes," just like "Today it rains," "Today it is windy"?

You see... War... For years now I've been dealing as best I can with a thing that in itself is appalling; war... and all this for ideals which I shall never, perhaps, be able to explain fully to myself..." "I too," replied Cosimo, "have lived many years for ideals which I would never be able to explain to myself; but I do something entirely good; I live on trees.

I desideri sono già ricordi.

One summer day, Eugenio Scalfari and I created an entire philosophical system: the philosophy of the élan vital . The next day we discovered that it had already been invented by Bergson.

KUBLAI: We have proved that if we were here, we would not be. POLO: And here, in fact, we are.

A obra literária é uma dessas mínimas porções nas quais o existente se cristaliza numa forma, adquire um sentido, que não é fixo, nem definido, nem enrijecido numa imobilidade mineral, mas tão vivo quanto um organismo.

Para guardar sus libros, Cosimo construyo en varias ecuaciones una especie de bibliotecas colgantes, defendidas de la mejor manera posible de la lluvia y de los roedores, pero las cambiaba continuamente de sitio, según los estudios y los gustos del momento, porque consideraba los libros un poco como los pájaros y no quería verlos quietos o enjaulados, decía que se entristecían.

It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything.

I thought: "Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead." And I also thought: "This means the beyond is not happy.

Se volessi scegliere un simbolo augurale per l'affacciarsi al nuovo millennio, sceglierei questo: l'agile salto improvviso del poeta-filosofo che si solleva sulla pesantezza del mondo, dimostrando che la sua gravità contiene il segreto della leggerezza, mentre quella che molti credono essere la vitalità dei tempi, rumorosa, aggressiva, scalpitante e rombante, appartiene al regno della morte, come un cimitero d'automobili arrugginite.

The world is reduced to a sheet of paper on which nothing can be written except abstract words.

Lucretius wants to write the poem of matter, but he warns us from the start that the reality of matter is that it's made of invisible particles. He

en suma, no tenía límites a mis pensamientos, que además no eran pensamientos porque no tenía un cerebro con que pensarlos y cada célula pensaba por su cuenta todo lo pensable todo de una vez, no a través de imágenes, ya que no las teníamos a disposición de ningún modo, sino sencillamente de esa manera indeterminada de sentirse allí que no excluía ningún modo de sentirse allí de otro modo.

One need only remind oneself of all that we expect from life to see how very strange it is, and to arrive at the conclusion that man has found his way into it by mistake and does not really belong there.

Per me i miracoli esistono e non esistono. Non bisogna complicarli con troppe storie. Bisogna crederci o non crederci ed in ambedue i casi le cose sono molto semplici.

Naturalmente io non sono un ingenuo e scuso il dottore di vedere nella vita stessa una manifestazione di malattia. La vita somiglia un poco alla malattia come procede per crisi e lisi ed ha i giornalieri miglioramenti e peggioramenti. A differenza delle altre malattie la vita è sempre mortale. Non sopporta cure. Sarebbe come voler turare i buchi che abbiamo nel corpo credendoli delle ferite. Morremmo strangolati non appena curati.

Kdybych si mohl vybrat, pak bych se nenarodil. Ale když to už musí být, pak se chci s tím osudem smí?it a být š?astný.

The great secretary of Nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon.