                  A Few Quotations

     No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a 
piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be 
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a 
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy frinds or of 
thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am 
involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for 
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, #19

                           # # #

     Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of 
infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on 
his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my 
imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those 
lips that I have kissed i Know not how oft. Where be your 
gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of 
merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not 
one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? Now 
get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an 
inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at 
that.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

                           # # #

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more, It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, King Lear

                           # # #

     Those who have long been good advocates are not 
afterwards on that account the better judges.

Descartes, DISCOURSE ON METHOD

                            # # #

     It is manifestly a dictate of the natural light that 
conservation and creation differ merely in respect of our 
mode of thinking.

Descartes, MEDITATIONS

                               

     Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
     Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
     Forever and forever when I move.

Tennyson, ULYSSES

                            # # #

     Happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it.

Andre Gide, THE IMMORALIST.

                            # # #

     One cannot both be sincere and seem so.

Gide, Ibid.

                            # # #

     Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping 
away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape 
irremediably when they forgot the value of the written 
letters.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE.

                            # # #

     My thought imposes no necessity on things.

Descartes, MEDITATIONS.

                            # # #

     "The passion of man for God is the self-consciousness 
of God."
     "Man's knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself."
     "Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being 
of God."
     "If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities 
are divine."

Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.

                            # # #

     History in general is ... the development of Spirit in 
Time, as Nature is the development of Idea in Space.

     What experience and history teach is that peoples and 
governments have never yet learned from history, let alone 
acted according to its lessons.

Hegel, PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

                            # # #

    Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

Thomas Brown, RELIGIO MEDICI.

                            # # #

     Love is that state in which man sees things most 
decidedly as they are not.

Nietzche, ANTICHRIST

                            # # #

     And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness 
and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit, 
for in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth 
knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Ecclesiastes, 17 & 18

                            # # #

     Ambition would not prevail but amongst a people wholly 
corrupted with covetousness and luxury.

St. Augustine, THE CITY OF GOD

                            # # #

1:4  To make light of philosophy is to be a true 
philosopher.

195. It is not to be doubted that the duration of this life 
is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, 
whatever may be its nature.

198. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his 
insensibility to great things, indicates a strange 
inversion.

203. That passion may not harm us, let us act as if we had 
only eight hours to live.

183. We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put 
something before us to prevent us seeing it.

297. Not finding justice, we have found force.

298. Being unable to make what is just strong, we have made 
what is strong just.

353. We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, 
but in touching both at once, and filling all the 
intervening space.

376. The weakness of man is far more evident in those who 
know it not than in those who know it.

384. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of 
contradiction a sign of truth.

389. It is wretched to have the wish, but not the power.

Blaise Pascal, PENSEES.

                            # # #

     Eche thing hath his perfection, although it be hid, and 
with reasonable discourses might be judged of him that hath 
knowledge in that matter.

     In pardoning the offender too much, ye do wrong to him 
that doth not offend.

Castiglione, THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER.

                            # # #

     Particular instances infer no general conclusions.

Thomas Lodge, ROSALYNDE
 
                            # # #

     As virtue is nothing else but action in accordance with 
the laws of one's own nature..., the foundation of virtue is 
the endeavor to preserve one's own being, and... happiness 
consists in man's power of preserving his own being.

Spinoza, ETHICS.

                           # # #

     Philosophy affords the means of discoursing with an 
appearance of truth on all matters, and commands the 
admiration of the more simple.

     Those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable 
fancies, and who can give expression to them with the 
greatest embellishment and harmony, are still (always) the 
best poets, though unaquainted with the art of poetry.

     No opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be 
imagined, which has not been maintained by some one of the 
philosophers.

     A plurality of suffrages is no guarantee of truth.

     A multitude of laws often only hampers justice.

     The act of mind by which a thing is believed is 
different from that by which we know that we believe it.

     A state of dependency is manifestly a state of 
imperfection. 

     ...All who have the common good of man at heart, that 
is, all who are virtuous in truth.

     To be useful to no one is really to be worthless.

Descartes, DISCOURSE ON METHOD

                            # # #

     Some go of necessity astray, because for them there is 
no such thing as a right path.

Thomas Mann, TONIO KROGER

                               ###

    All terms which semiotically condense a whole process 
elude definition; only that which has no history can be 
defined.

Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals.
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