Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Well, suppose we remain upon earth, after all? Suppose we bravely accept the death of our dreams at the same time as the death of our bodies? This beyond is decidedly uncertain, quite vague and mobile. I do not believe that it exists everywhere; I be...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

How many contradictions! Eh! If I loaded my wagon all on the same side, I'd tumble it over.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

To have a solid foundation of skepticism, -that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

It is undefinable; and moreover, if it were defined it would lose all its value. God is not all that exists; God is all that does not exist. Therein resides the power & the charm of that mysterious word. God is tradition, God is legend, God is folklo...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Man can no more see the world than a fish can see the river bank.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Deprived of the infinite, man has become what he always was: a supernumerary. He hardly counts; he forms part of the troupe called Humanity; if he misses a cue, he is hissed; and if he drops through the trapdoor another puppet is in readiness to take...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Man is an animal that "arrived"; that is all.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Intelligence is perhaps but a malady, -a beautiful malady; the oysters's pearl.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Abstractions do us much harm by impelling us to the quest of the absolute in all things. Joy does not exist, but there are joys: and these joys may not be folly felt unless they are detached from neutral or even painful conditions. The idea of contin...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Nothing returns, nothing begins anew; it is never the same thing, and yet it seems always the same. For, if the days never return, every moment brings forth new beings whose destiny it will be to create for themselves, in the course of their lives, t...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Tears flow and smiles fade to the same rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

The greater part of a men who speak ill of women are speaking of a certain woman.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

It is a communion at once mystic & real, in the guise of metal. Money which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism, which knew & understood everything, opens to...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is u...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not...

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques

Nothing is better for "spiritual advancement" & the detachment of the flesh than a close reading of the "Erotic Dictionary.

Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques