Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.

Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.

Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit.

Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit.

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance read more

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.

The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn read more

The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

...ideas have a tendency to live lives of their own, and having become a part of tradition, they are very read more

...ideas have a tendency to live lives of their own, and having become a part of tradition, they are very difficult to root out. When summarized in a few neat words or phrases, these gems of wisdom become substitutes for thought, and gradually take on much of the status of revealed truth. Occasionally, some iconoclast sees fit to challenge one of them, and a brief flurry ensues, after which things go on about as before. It is easy to think of plenty of ideas that are passing, if they have not already passed, beyond the stage of effective discussion.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control read more

The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, read more

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, and indifferent. But a rational life, the life of a valuer, does not consist essentially in reaction. It consists in action. Man does not find his values, like the other animals; he creates them. The primary focus of a valuer is not to take the world as it comes and pass judgment. His primary focus is to identify what might and ought to exist, to uncover potentialities that he can exploit, to find ways of reshaping the world in the image of his values.

A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to "hunger and read more

A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to "hunger and thirst" after it is often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes.