Famous Quotes & Sayings

William James

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

William James

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

William James

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Virgil

Who can blind lover's eyes?

Virgil

We can't all do everything.

Virgil

Who asks whether the enemy was defeated by strategy or valor?

Virgil

Time passes irrevocably.

Virgil

Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate.

Vladimir Lenin

The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.

Wallace Stevens

In a world of universal poverty The philosophers alone will be fat Against the autumn winds In an autumn that will be perpetual.

Wallace Stevens

Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible.

W. S. Gilbert

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.

W. H. Auden

See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

Roger Ebert

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

Willard Van Orman Quine

We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.

Saint Augustine

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Saint Augustine

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

Saint Augustine

There is no possible source of evil except good.

Saint Augustine

And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul... the Light Unchangeable... He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows Eternity.

Saint Augustine

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

Saint Augustine

To seek the highest good is to live well.

Saint Augustine

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

Saint Augustine

Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.

Saint Augustine

We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone

Saint Augustine

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

Saint Augustine

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.

Saint Augustine

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

Saint Augustine

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

Saint Augustine

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

Saint Augustine

Punishment is justice for the unjust.

Saint Augustine

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.