The world is unapt to be cured; and so impatient of anything that presses it, that it thinks of nothing but disengaging itself at what price soever. We see by a thousand examples, that it ordinarily cures itself to its cost. The discharge of a present evil...
A philistine is defined to be a man without mental needs. From this is follows, firstly, in relation to himself, that he has no intellectual pleasures; for, as was remarked before, there are no real pleasures without real needs. The philistine's life is animated by...
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power; the weaker sort contribute folly, vanity, and idleness; of these I am one. It seems as if...
Togetherness. From "I" and "me” to "us" and we. Your relationships will be as vital and alive as you are. If you re dead, your relationship is dead. And if your relationships are boring and inadequate, it's because you are boring and inadequate. Liven yourself...
In the court of Louis XIV, nobles and ministers would spend days and nights debating issues of state. They would confer, argue, make and break alliances, and argue again, until finally the critical moment arrived: Two of them would be chosen to represent the different...
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of...
If someone asks me why I love literature, the answer that I immediately think of is that literature helps me live. I no longer seek in literature, as I did in adolescence, to avoid wounds that real people could inflict upon me; literature does not...
“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.” MARCUS AURELIUS, ROMAN EMPEROR AND PHILOSOPHER (AD 121–180), STOIC If Marcus Aurelius’s declaration has a familiar ring, it is because philosophers and religious thinkers have been saying more or less the same...
The goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, (1872 - 1970), Logician, Humanist One of the things Russell is doing in this statement is aligning himself with the long line of philosophers who believe that thinking supplies us with one...
t is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and...
