Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of Virtue or mischief.
— Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English jurist and philosopher. The Essays (1625); "Of Marriage and the Single Life."

......and he hath riches untold....

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

......and he hath riches untold....

Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

— George Berkeley (1685-1753), Irish philosopher and bishop. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge introduction, sec. 3 (1710).

[victauria]

"I always imagine God as the last person to be impressed by long words or to be deceived by specious excuses. For heaven's sake, He made us. He knows perfectly well that we are fragile, stupid, glorious, grubby and brave."

-- Anne Perry, Highgate Rise

[WT Sharpe]

The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.
— Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher, theologian, and existentialist. Works of Love (1847).

[kennyc]

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."
- Richard Feynman

[covingtoncat73]

I have drunk, and seen the spider.
~Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (II.i.36-45)

[AlexBell]

No mockery in the world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping on it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

Charlotte Brontë, in Villette, one of the saddest books I have ever read; said to better than Jane Eyre by George Eliot and Virgina Woolf.

[kennyc]

From Goodreads quote of the day:

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here."
- Arthur C. Clarke

Early on in his writing career, acclaimed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (born December 16, 1917) emigrated from England to Sri Lanka. Because of his dual status, he was able to receive a knighthood from the British government in 1998 and then the Sri Lankabhimanya, Sri Lanka's highest civil honor, in 2005.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

From Goodreads quote of the day:

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here."
- Arthur C. Clarke

Early on in his writing career, acclaimed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (born December 16, 1917) emigrated from England to Sri Lanka. Because of his dual status, he was able to receive a knighthood from the British government in 1998 and then the Sri Lankabhimanya, Sri Lanka's highest civil honor, in 2005.

"Better pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, because there's b****r all down here on Earth."
~Monty Python, Galaxy Song

“That young girl,” he added unexpectedly, “is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[WT Sharpe]

Why is it that right up to and throughout much of the medieval period, moving from C to F# was actually considered a sinful maneuver? It wasn’t something simply discordant; it was something that violated what is profoundly important; something violative of a harmonic precept thought to be part of the intended design and order of the cosmos. This proved to be an understanding that spanned centuries.

Now, what’s underneath all this? It’s the view that Creation is itself an expression of an essentially harmonic and mathematical structure, expressive of a divinely rational plan.

— Prof. Daniel N. Robinson, Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Lecture 3: "Pythagoras and the Divinity of Number."

[issybird]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Charlotte Brontë, in Villette, one of the saddest books I have ever read; said to better than Jane Eyre by George Eliot and Virgina Woolf.

O/T: Villette is on my ten-best list for 2015.

[WT Sharpe]

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
— Friedrich Nietzsche (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900); German philosopher. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (written between 1883 and 1885), Part II.

[WT Sharpe]

Überzeugungen sind gefährlichere Feinde der Wahrheit, als Lügen.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900); German philosopher. Human, All Too Human (1878).

[kennyc]

"For a clever fish, water is “just right“ for it to swim in. Had it been too cold, it would freeze; too hot, it would boil. Surely the water temperature had to be just right for the fish to exist. “I’m very important. My existence cannot be an accident,” the proud fish would conclude.

Well, he is not very important. He is just a clever fish. The ocean temperature is not being controlled with the purpose of making it possible for it to exist. Quite the opposite: the fish is fragile. A sudden or gradual temperature swing would kill it, as any trout fisherman knows.

We so crave for meaningful connections that we see them even when they are not there. The gravest mistake we can make is to think that the cosmos has plans for us, that we are somehow special from a cosmic perspective."

- Marcelo Gleiser, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College, on Human Perspective...

[kennyc]

"Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness."

"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog."

"Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low."

- Edward Hoagland born 12/21/1932

Author of many Nature and Personal Essays, The Courage of Turtles and many more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hoagland