Quotes About Philosophy

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. —PLATO, Republic, BOOK II

There's a pattern and we're a part of it. Yet if you scratched very deep at that idea of pattern, you hit an emptiness so dark that it destroyed, categorically, anything you'd ever looked at or thought of as light.

Because I don't care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe. The basic fact of existence—of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do—is catastrophe.

Beauty alters the grain of reality.

And now," said Julian, when everything was quiet, "I hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?

It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we shiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?

I've come to believe that there's no truth beyond

And if beauty is terror, then what is desire?

La belleza altera la textura de la realidad.

That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is

Well—very Russian, you know, to complain how bad things are all the time! Even if life is great—keep it to yourself. You don't want to tempt the devil.

Eso era el cuerpo: falible, sujeto a achaques. Enfermedad, dolor. ¿Por qué la gente se acaloraba tanto sobre ello?

And what is beauty?" "Terror.

I knew then, and know now, virtually nothing

And as much as I'd like to believe there's a truth beyond illusion, I've come to believe that there's no truth beyond illusion.

You don't need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own

If one is to read Dante, and understand him, one must become a Christian if only for a few hours.

no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe

Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it.

Flapping crows. Shiny beetles crawling in the undergrowth. A patch of sky, frozen in a cloudy retina, reflected in a puddle on the ground. Yoo-hoo. Being and nothingness

Kaleidoscopes and pendulums—Roosevelt's images connoted an abiding belief in the hard lesson of his crucible philosophy: All one can do is to prepare oneself, to wait in readiness for what might come.

We are being punished, that's all." "What for?" he demanded, already on guard because there was a tone in her voice he hated. "For presuming. For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be.

The point is, it seems to me that my mind is a mass of totally contradictory attitudes about everything.' 'Everyone's mind is a mass of contradictory attitudes. Why should it matter?' 'It should matter to us, surely?

Do you imagine, Ted, that if you are kind to servants you are going to advance the cause of socialism?" "Yes," Ted had said. "Then I can't help you," Willi had said, with a shrug, meaning there was no hope for him. Jimmy