Do you think you wear a mask?’‘I’m wearing one right now.’ Valentino smiled softly. ‘We both are.’‘It’s a sad thought.’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves?
This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. (…) Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.
You cannot change your FUTURE, you can change your HABITS. And surely your HABITS will change your FUTURE
This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.
It’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen……if they don’t exist, how can a man see them?
There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.
In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think…
A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.
True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: ‘I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live
Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.
I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.
If I didn’t try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.
You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.
Philosophy hasn’t made any progress? – If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn’t genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can’t this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.
I’m more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.
We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.
It is hard to be angry when one has seen the sun rise,’ she said.It seems to be true,’ he admitted. ‘I wonder why.’Because it makes one feel so small and insignificant. It has been rising forever and will rise forever no matter what we do or do not do. All our problems are as nothing to the sun.
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one.
Man is an animal who has to live in a lie in order tolive at all.
There’s been terrible things we seen, en’t there? And more a coming, more’n likely. So I think I’d rather not know what’s in the future. I’ll stick to the present.
Every being, created by God and unspoiled by man, is perfect, strictly defined and autonomous, entirely complete and at the same time with a built-in ability to grow and develop. This is the essence of its dignity and holiness. It is not an embodiment of God’s immense Personality, but only one of the realisations of His perfection.
We never realize just how many other lives we can help when their paths cross our own.
The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.
Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor–by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence–and every achievement is an expression of it.
Wild animals are less wild and more human than many humans of this world
Where we choose to be, where we choose to be–we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.
Me, I’ve seen 45 years, and I’ve only figured out one thing. That’s this: if a person would just make the effort, there’s something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there’s always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there’s even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren’t for that, nobody’d survive.
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
Philosophy is the toil which can never tire persons engaged in it. All ways are strewn with roses, and the farther you go, the more enchanting objects appear before you and invite you on.
Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.
Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.
It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.
Electricity was a reality in the universe when Moses led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. This is true of all natural laws; they have always existed but only when understood may they be used.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile madeThe tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade
This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.
The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.
Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.
My teacher asked my favorite color. … I said ‘Rainbow’…. and I was punished to stand out of my class.
Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Reality is harsh. It can be cruel and ugly. Yet no matter how much we grieve over our environment and circumstances nothing will change. What is important is not to be defeated, to forge ahead bravely. If we do this, a path will open before us.
Yesterday, I was sad, tomorrow i may be sad again, but today i know that i am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and i know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.
Life is a bitter sweet journey my friend, a bitter sweet journey.
Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)
The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.