Philosophical Quotes

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

The silkworm spins out his life, and, wrapping himself in his labor, dies.

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

Do not yield to misfortunes, but advance more boldly to meet them, as your fortune permits you.

None but himself can be his parallel.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

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

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

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

I'm not trying to be philosophical, but I really think it's my job to help children. And I don't care if people laugh.

Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

We are like snails, each stuck to his own leaf.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Life's uncertain voyage.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

He like a rock in the sea unshaken stands his ground.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

I see I have made my self a slave to Philosophy.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

Who depends upon another man's table often dines late.

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.

Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.

The learning and knowledge that we have,is,at the most,but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.

A confession has to be part of your new life.