Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God’s, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.
It will be like having an extreme close-up in high definition to examine each freckle, while failing to notice whether the person is even wearing pants.
...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, a...
…there is not a day of my life that I am not critiquing myself to see if my politics are borne out in the way that I live and the way that I talk and present myself.
I have recommended you the dignity of skepticism: yet here I am, prowling around the Absolute. Technique of contradiction? Remember, rather, what Flaubert said: "I am a mystic and I believe in nothing".
The good polis is made by the good person, his moral character intact, and the good polis, in turn, helps turn out good persons, their moral character intact.
I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.
Kleos is sometimes translated as "acoustic renown" the spreading renown you get from people talking about your exploits. It's a bit like having a large Twitter following.
If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google's customers, but really we're its products.
And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world. (p. 40)
On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu. Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point...
We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?
I see there is a good deal of grandiloquence in my book — my friends and foes have told me. I think it must be true, for there is a good deal of grandiloquence in me — and in nature also: I saw a sunset last evening that was a gross imposition up...
... there is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; bec...
But she had known, better than anyone else, what demons he had faced, had known how hard he had fought to free himself from them. That he had lost the fight in the end made the struggle no less honorable.
Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty...
In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.
My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up.
To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can't learn at the foot of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down.
you should not run for president because tactically you can win. The questions you have to ask are why you're running for president and what will you do when you are president. You shouldn't run until you know the answers to those questions.
