Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.
....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best. (tr Jowett)
Fim Quando eu morrer batam em latas, Rompam aos saltos e aos pinotes, Façam estalar no ar chicotes, Chamem palhaços e acrobatas! Que o meu caixão vá sobre um burro Ajaezado à andaluza... A um morto nada se recusa, Eu quero por força ir de burro...
Sólo yo entiendo lo lejos que está el cielo de nosotros; pero conozco cómo acortar las veredas. Todo consiste en morir, Dios mediante, cuando uno quiera y no cuando Él lo disponga. O, si tú quieres, forzarlo a disponer antes de tiempo.
(Can human beings change? The humor, and the sadness, of remarriage comedies can be said to result from the fact that we have no good answer to that question.)
Wäre ich ein Zimmermann, würde ich dir ein Fenster zu meiner Seele zimmern. Wenn du hineinschauen würdest, sähest du dich selbst in der Scheibe gespiegelt. Und dann wüsstest du, dass meine Seele ein Spiegelbild von deiner ist.
An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.
Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact - forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.
The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.
But it is always easy to put together stories about a past which nobody any longer remembers, like those about journeys to countries where nobody has ever been.
And like an aviator who rolls painfully along the ground until, abruptly, he breaks away from it, I felt myself being slowly lifted towards the silent peaks of memory.
But old age, to begin with, has something in common with death. Some face it with indifference, not because they have more courage than others, but because they have less imagination.
No doubt, having developed the habit, out of idleness, of each day putting off my work until the day after, I thought that death could be dealt with in the same way.
Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.
Knowledge rooted in experience shapes what we value and as a consequence how we know what we know as well as how we use what we know.
I'm no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire.
If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?
No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference… between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
Militant feminists are pro‐choice because it’s their ultimate avenue of power over men. And believe me, to them it is a question of power. It is their attempt to impose their will on the rest of society, particularly on men.
