If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse comes into being by spontaneous generation out of gray rags and dust, it’s a good idea to examine the rags very closely to see how a mouse could have hidden in them… but if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philisophical Investigations)
Some people take such delight in [the study of number] that they like to boast among the unlearned instead of asking why the things which they simply percieve to be true actually are true, or why the things that are not only true but also unchangable (as they have understood them to be) actually are unchangable… Such people may seem learned, but are in no way wise.
– St. Augustine (On Christian Teaching)
‘I am going to… unless I do not’ is not like ‘This is the case, unless it isn’t’. It has an analogue in estimates of the future: ‘this is going to happen… unless it doesn’t’. (Someone may prevent it.) This could be said even of an eclipse of the sun; because the verification of predictions always awaits the event—and the sun might blow up before the eclipse.
– G.E.M. Anscombe (Intention)
As we can touch no piece of the body but it hath soul therein which giveth life and sense thereto, be it never so small a portion, so in all scripture is there no history so gross, if I may so name it, or so base, but that it is quickened with some spiritual lively mystery.
– Thomas More (The Sadness of Christ)
Friendship by dividing and sharing makes prosperity more splendid and adversity more tolerable.
– Aelred of Rievaulx (Spiritual Friendship)
The contemporary mind recoils from nothing so much as from the notion of a limitation deliberately accepted.
– Denis De Rougemont (Love in the Western World)
Happiness is indeed a Eurydice, vanishing as soon as gazed upon. It can exist only in acceptance, and succumbs as soon as it is laid claim to.
– Denis De Rougemont (Love in the Western World)
To lack possibility means either that everything has become necessary for a person or that everything has become trivial.
– Soren Kierkegaard (The Sickness Unto Death)
The only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy… It does not matter how small the sins… Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.
– C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.
– Proverbs 26:11 (KJV)
In any sort of sphere, it is inevitable that evil should dominate wherever the technical side of things is either completely or almost sovereign… The responsibility for any evil overtaking [technicians] has to be exclusively borne by those who have allowed them full reign.
– Simone Weil (The Need for Roots)
Perhaps there is nothing about so-called educated people and believers in “modern ideas” that is as nauseous as their lack of modesty and the comfortable insolence of their eyes and hands with which they touch, lick, and finger everything.
– Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good & Evil)
It is grievous to be unable to find someone to whom one can give oneself, but it is inexpressibly grievous to be unable to give oneself.
– Soren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)
It is extremely difficult to carry out observations of a superior person.
– Soren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)
The grain never quite disappears in the bread as the tree has disappeared in the table.
– Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition)
The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can at any moment turn against itself, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these contraries to be “new values.”
– Hannah Arendt (Life of the Mind)
Anger may be educated to become a very generous passion, arousing itself at the sight of whatever appears to be injustice; but no matter what the substance of the charges of injustice it makes, no matter how selfish the interest it is really protecting, it is always accompanied by the conviction that it is just.
– Allan Bloom (The Republic of Plato)
A wish is not a fact. Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth; one does not prove it to be true.
– Leo Strauss (Natural Right and History)
Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community.
– Deitrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together)
The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility—of being unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could not, have known what he was doing—is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.
– Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition)
Indeed, one can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true; one can be deceived by appearances, but one can also be deceived by the superficiality of shrewdness, by the flattering conceit which is absolutely certain that it cannot be deceived… To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception.
– Soren Kierkegaard (Works of Love)
Common folk are only a breath,
great men an illusion.
Placed in the scales, they rise.
– Psalm 62. (Divine Office)
Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying—until you hit the ground—and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground.
– Wendell Berry (Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community)
Do not look at dangers afar off. You fancy they are armies; they are only trees in the distance. While you are gazing at them you may make some false steps.
– St. Francis de Sales (Golden Councils)