Quotes About Philosophy

Loquor enim de docto homine et erudito, cui vivere est cogitare

Marcus Tullius Cicero

User de ce qu'on a, et agir en tout selon ses forces, telle est la règle du sage.

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.

The goddess Fortune is mad, blind, and stupid, some philosophers maintain. They declare that she stands upon a revolving globe of stone; whither Chance impels this stone, thither, they say, does Fortune fall. She is blind, they repeat, for that she fails wholly to perceive whereto she attaches herself. Moreover they declare that she is mad because she is cruel, uncertain, and inconstant; stupid because she knows not how to tell worthy from unworthy.

I worked with Diodotus the Stoic, who made his residence in my house, and after a life of long intimacy died there only a short time ago.

Age nunc, refer animum, sis, ad veritatem, [...].

In Cicero's time the left and the right wing in ethical philosophy were represented by the Epicureans and the Stoics respectively, while the Peripatetics held a middle ground.

Turpis autem fuga mortis omni est morte pejor.

they follow nature as the most perfect guide to a good life. Now

Breve tempus ætatis satis est longum ad bene honesteque vivendum

The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.

for my own part I cannot cordially approve, I merely tolerate, a philosopher who talks of setting bounds to the desires. Is it possible for desire to be kept within bounds? It ought to be destroyed, uprooted altogether.

As I gazed rather intently at the earth my grandfather said: How long will your thoughts continue to dwell upon the earth?

O noble philosophy! Why, they seem to take the sun out of the universe when they deprive life of friendship, than which we have from the immortal gods no better, no more delightful boon.

ait enim declinare atomum sine causa; quo nihil turpius physico, quam fieri quicquam sine causa dicere, — et

Il me semble que cette méditation anticipée des malheurs humains produit presque le même effet que la guérison obtenue avec le temps, sinon que, dans le premier cas, c'est le raisonnement qui guérit, et dans le second, la nature ; mais on comprend l'essentiel, à savoir que le mal tenu pour le plus grand de tous n'est jamais si grand qu'il puisse détruire la vie heureuse.

We may, I think, give the name of perfect duty to the absolute right, which the Greeks term ?????????;1 while contingent duty is what they call ????????.2 According to their definitions, what is right in itself is perfect duty; that for the doing of which a satisfactory reason can be given is a contingent

it is by no means surprising that though we are first commended to Wisdom by the primary natural instincts, afterwards Wisdom itself becomes dearer to us than are the instincts from which we came to her.

A wise man's life is all one preparation for death.

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali.

What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.

I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.