All Quotes

"All Europe, and the temperate parts of the vast , abound with . The , which is little regarded in warmer climates, is used for a variety of purposes in the bleak and barren , and in other northern countries. ... In the it affords a dye. en cloth boiled in water, and afterwards in a strong decoction made from the green tops and flowers of this plant, becomes of a beautiful orange-colour. Brettius relates, that a kind of ale brewed from these young tops was much used by the : and it is said to be still an ingredient in the beer in some of the Western Isles. In many parts of Great Britain s are made of this Heath; and it is an excellent fuel. The flowers are either a kind of rose-colour slightly tinged with purple, or they are quite white. Bees collect a great quantity of honey from them."

"The is an evergreen shrub, with fine glossy leaves: the honey-breathing blossoms, as Evelyn terms them, come out in May; they are numerous, but very small, and are very grateful to bees. It is a native of Europe and , and was introduced into this country in 1629."

"When I lose my temper, my mouth starts moving on its own [...]"

"... queen Elizabeth ... is said to have planted an with her own hand at , in which she was brought up when an infant. It went always by her name, and I remember it a stately flourishing tree, except that the top was decayed. It stood at the upper end of , near where the turnpike now is, and was boundary of the parish on the north side. It was felled, to the great regret of the neighbourhood, on the 11th of November 1745, and sold for a , by lord of the manor."

"The , from the esculent quality of the s, which, in times of scarcity, are frequently eaten by the poor in the south of France, ground, and made into bread: some eat them fresh like nuts; they are sweet, and very different from our s. This Oak was cultivated by in 1739."

"says that the gum-resin, called ', is supposed to be the incense formerly used by the ancients in their religious ceremonies, though not the substance known by that name in shops. It is much employed by the Roman Catholics in their chapels, for similar uses: when burned, it diffuses a very fragrant smell. This olibanum, or true frankincense, has been supposed to be the produce of the , but that plant does not afford any resin. The olibanum now sold in the shops is the produce of the ."

"The is most appropriately named, for, in addition to the pensive drooping appearance of its branches, it is common to see little drops of water, which stand like fallen tears upon the leaves. The willow will grow in any but a dry soil, but most delights and best thrives in the immediate neighbourhood of water."

"Bess Kent is an enigmatic figure. We know she wrote voluminous letters, in which she laid her heart bare, but few have survived. We know that she wrote at least three books — two about flowers and trees and one for children, and that she planned to write another — but we know little about how she conducted her research, or how long these books took her to write. In the late 1810s and early 1820s she attempted to wean herself off , but there is little to indicate when she first developed this addiction. She made at least one suicide attempt and threatened to make others, but the circumstances surrounding them are a matter of conjecture."

""Liberty is the soul's right... not the state's gift." — Marcel Nel, X reply to @caesarionist, 07:54 UTC (10:54 SAST), 17 September 2025."

"My mother always warned me, even before I started acting, that if I don’t have the intention to eat anything, I should not even smell it."

"If anybody really claims to love me and my brand, they will protect everything that has to do with me."

"You are not a celebrity if you are not being celebrated, you can’t keep moving if you are not being appreciated, you will not grow if they don’t like what you do."

"The truth is that they say anything that a woman has a hand in brings forth success, so if I’m loved by women, then I’m a success."

"Truth be told, everybody wants to associate themselves with a work-in-progress, I am a work-in-progress."

"In many ways Kenya is a model example of community social welfare. It's a community keyed to the extended family, in which each generation helps the other."

"A problem concerning a child is dealt with in the context of its family, never just on its own."

"The conflict in Mindanao is very complex, full of variables and dense in social, economic, cultural, and religious phenomena that are intertwined with one another. What is certain is that the ordinary people want peace, and must start afresh from here. Interreligious dialogue can help overcome the social and ethnic fragmentation of Mindanao."

"I see in the Church and among Christians a constant effort to evangelize the people at different levels of society, and this is a positive sign. On the other hand, the mission must be adapted to cultural changes: the advent of social media and the great influence of mass media can also be seen as an obstacle to the mission. The immediate availability of diverse information, in fact, tends to marginalize the Christian vision of life and Christian teachings. This dynamic is most evident in urban areas and less in rural areas. However, the Philippine population still gives much importance to Christian values and strongly participates in the life of the Church."

"The Word of God translated into a local language can be better understood by people. The ultimate goal of translating the Bible into an indigenous language like Cuyonon arises from an innate desire to relate more deeply to God. The Lord speaks to each one of us through his Word. By listening to it in our mother tongue, it will now be easier for us to understand his will, follow him and be his disciples."

"If the world continues to do nothing, the result will be the elimination of the Christian presence. They have settled within our country little by little, attacking the army, civil structures and the population. Now, their main target seems to be Christians. I believe they are trying to trigger an inter-religious conflict. Insecurity continues to increase and has forced us to reduce our pastoral activities."

"Whether one is a Muslim, Christian, Catholic, Protestant or of a traditional African belief, terrorism has spared no one and causes everyone to lose their livelihoods, their home, activities, life and freedom for those who have been taken hostage."

"I would like to say to them, both students and teachers: being able to meet to talk about philosophy, literature, art, religion and science, as we do at school, is a blessing, a great blessing. For students and young people, for example, it is perhaps the best time of their lives, an opportunity that brings us into contact with values, ideas and the best things that humanity has produced. And I would remind teachers that our profession is, in many ways, one of the most beautiful. We are fortunate. But it is a profession that allows us to remain in contact with young people, with science, with art, with literature, with everything that makes up culture, throughout our lives. So, I believe we should consider ourselves fortunate."

"(Citing the Metaphysics of Aristotle) ‘The good and the beautiful are different because the former is always in praxis, while the latter is also in immovable things.’ [...] For Aristotle, a true good must be achievable through practice. Beauty, on the other hand, is not always achievable; there is one aspect of beauty that is achievable, which is achievable through practice and is therefore an action, but there is clearly another aspect of beauty that is not achievable and which places it in the realm of immutable realities, i.e. realities that do not depend on human action. [...] “Beauty is always order, symmetry and determinacy”. [...] These characteristics – according to Aristotle – also belong to immobile realities such as mathematical objects. Mathematical objects are beautiful because they are orderly, symmetrical and determinate. Think of geometric figures, think of geometric theorems. Mathematicians themselves say today that a theorem, a proof, can be beautiful, can be elegant. And this confirms Aristotle's idea of beauty as belonging to immutable realities. Mathematical objects are not practicable, they cannot be realised through action; they are there, they must be described, they must be proven, but they are not the product of our action, so they are immutable realities, but that is why they are beautiful. [...] For Aristotle, there are many goods: for example, health is a good, strength is a good, wealth is a good. Therefore, many human actions have these goods as their end. [...] However, some actions are good because they procure goods, but they are not beautiful actions, there is no reason to consider them beautiful."

"According to Aristotle, true happiness consists in doing the things we enjoy most with our friends. [...] Those who love philosophy love above all else to philosophise (in Greek: sum-philosophein) with their friends."

"Interviewer: What brings Aristotle closer to Lucretius' statement, “Happy is he who can know the causes of things”? Professor Berti: This is a point that has perhaps not yet been adequately explored because Lucretius was known to be an Epicurean, and Epicureans in ancient times were generally hostile to Aristotle and polemical towards him. Most of the anti-Aristotelian anecdotes preserved in history are of Epicurean origin. Nevertheless, Lucretius, the great Epicurean poet and philosopher, while sharing Epicurus' belief that happiness consists in pleasure – what he calls in Latin “'voluptas”', with which he begins his poem “'De Rerum Natura”' – Lucretius himself states that happy is he who has been able to know the causes of things. Therefore, this pleasure, this happiness, which is clearly an intellectual pleasure, includes knowledge of the causes, that is, the ability to explain phenomena and solve the problems that experience presents us with. And this is ultimately a trait shared by all great philosophers, but also – I would say – by all philosophers, all those who love philosophy, that is, the desire to know, the happiness that comes from solving problems and discovering the causes of why things happen."

"More than finalism (which in Aristotle concerns only internal finality), Christian theology owes to Aristotle the concept of a transcendent and personal Principle, which in Aristotle is the first among the immobile motors of the heavens, and therefore the first of beings and the motor of everything, while for Christians (as for Muslims) it is God. However, we must bear in mind the different meaning that the word “god” had for the ancients and has for believers in monotheistic religions. For the ancients (Greeks and Romans), ‘god’ is a common noun, the name of a species of living beings, like ‘man’, and is therefore written with an article and a lowercase initial letter (the god). For monotheists (Jews, Christians, Muslims), however, ‘God’ is the name of a single person, so it is written without an article and with a capital letter. These are grammatical rules, not ideological choices."

"What Christians consider to be Aristotle's “God”, i.e. the first unmoved mover – which for Aristotle is ‘a god’ because it is an immortal and happy living being – is not creator, it is not providential, and above all it is not a saviour. However, like the Christian God, it is transcendent and personal. Its transcendence is expressed by its immutability, which distinguishes it from every other reality we experience. His personality, on the other hand, is due to the fact that he thinks, therefore lives, and is happy to think, therefore possesses a will. However, I believe it is wrong to compare a philosophical doctrine, conquered by a man through exclusively human abilities (experience and reasoning), with a concept that is the result of divine revelation."

"Aristotle, like all the ancients, was a polytheist, that is, he believed in a plurality of gods, and “practised” his religion, that is, he prayed to the gods and made vows, as can be seen from his will. However, he criticised the anthropomorphic aspects of polytheism, interpreting the gods as the driving forces of the heavens, and recognised a “first” among them, thus paving the way, later taken up by the Stoics, towards monotheism."

"Interviewer: So today society is more in need of philosophy than ever... Professor Berti: Not only today, but always. Philosophy is in fact inherent in human nature; it has always existed and will always exist, despite attempts to decree its end. This was not only the thinking of Aristotle, for whom “all human beings by nature (i.e. males and females, free and slaves, Greeks and barbarians) desire knowledge”, and philosophy – if rightly understood – is the highest form of knowledge. Already in the Apology, Plato has Socrates say that ‘a life without inquiry is not worth living for a human being’."

"Philosophy and metaphysics are notorious because of the endless disputes that have always devastated them."

"Could evil, sin, catastrophe, and even drugs be the occasional material that God offers to men so that they can somehow see, feel, and understand him?"

"I began studying Aristotle when I was still a student here in Padua. When I decided to write my thesis, I approached a professor who seemed particularly interesting to me, Marino Gentile. I told him about my interests, which centred on the debate on metaphysics, in particular the objections that contemporary philosophy raised against metaphysics, represented by major currents such as Marxism, existentialism and positivism, which were hostile to metaphysics. The professor advised me to read Aristotle's Metaphysics, a text I had already read for some university exams. Reading it, I realised that there were still many things to be clarified, even though Aristotle was considered by my colleagues to be an outdated philosopher. Perhaps this was also due to the cultural isolation that Italy suffered as a result of the war and the presence of the historicism of Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce. In other European countries, he was still a relevant philosopher, especially in English philosophy, within the context of reflection on everyday language; English scholars continually discussed Aristotle. In Germany, Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the last century, devoted a great deal of attention to Aristotle. Over time, I continued to study Aristotle, discovering more and more how relevant he was. Today, Aristotle is one of the most studied philosophers in the world and is considered an interlocutor, in contrast to those currents that are now almost obsolete."

"At first, I was greatly influenced by the Aristotelian tradition, represented by the Islamic and Christian worlds, a tradition in which Aristotle was the philosopher of those who wanted to give a philosophical basis to those who had a religious faith. Later, I realised that Aristotle did not have this problem at all; Aristotle's interest was exclusively scientific, leading him to deal with areas that have become our current sciences, and to question concepts such as cause, a concept much broader than how we conceive it on a daily basis."

"For Plato, the soul was something that entered the body and left it at the moment of death. For the pre-Socratics, it was a kind of spectre. Aristotle, as many know, defines the soul as the form, or the first act of the body. We need to reflect on the concept of form; form is not a part of the organism, which has its own unity. Organisms are bodies capable of performing certain functions; these capacities are obviously reduced in plants, while in animals they are already more complex. In human beings, we find activities that we call superior, such as thinking and willing. The soul is the possession of these capacities."

"Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me."

"But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the ."

"But the sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken."

"And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah."

"And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the , the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land."

"For the sea wrought, and was tempestuous."

"So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging."

"Then Jonah prayed unto the his God out of the fish's belly."

"When my soul fainted within me I remembered the : and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple."

"Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee."

"For I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."

"And the God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered."

"And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"

"And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment."

"Sailors can abide a great deal, but not a Jonah."

"Philosophy looks at reality, and is therefore theory, but it looks at it as it relates to the choice of ends and therefore to practical commitment."