Philosophers

"Experience will show you, a Master can only point the way."

"Open your door to a good day and prepare yourself for a bad one."

"Better late than never."

"If you are looking for a friend who has no faults, you will have no friends."

"A man is judged by his deeds, not by his words."

"Better a patient man than a warrior, one who controls his temper than one who takes a city."

"Love rules without rules."

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth."

"In an instant illumination can be achieved, it is as easy as turning on a light, the problem is finding the switch in the dark."

"He who digs a pit for his brother shall fall into it; and he who sets up traps shall be caught in them."

"O my boy! thou hast been to me like a man who took a stone, and threw it up to heaven to stone his Lord with it. And the stone did not hit, and did not reach high enough, but it became the cause of guilt and sin. O my boy! if thou hadst honoured me and respected me and hadst listened to my words thou wouldst have been my heir and wouldst have reigned over my dominions. O my son! know thou that if the tail of the dog or the pig were ten cubits long it would not approach to the worth of the horse's even if it were like silk. O my boy! I thought that thou wouldst have been my heir at my death; and thou through thy envy and thy insolence didst desire to kill me. But the Lord delivered me from thy cunning."

"Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it."

"De Lubac discusses an atheism which means to suppress this searching, he says, “even including the problem as to what is responsible for the birth of God in human consciousness.”"

"Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution."

"Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not “a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized.”"

"Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement."

"It is a great good fortune, as Stendhal said, for one “to have his passion as a profession.”"

"The function [of objective thinking] is to reduce all phenomena which bear witness to the union of subject and world, putting in their place the clear idea of the object as in itself and of the subject as pure consciousness. It therefore severs the links which unite the thing and the embodied subject, leaving only sensible qualities to make up our world (to the exclusion of the modes of appearance which we have described), and preferably visual qualities, because these give the impression of being autonomous, and because they are less directly linked to our body and present us with an object rather than introducing us into an atmosphere. But in reality all things are concretions of a setting, and any explicit perception of a thing survives in virtue of a previous communication with a certain atmosphere."

"Language transcends us and yet, we speak."

"Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, moonlight and sunlight present themselves in our recollection not preeminently as sensory contents but as certain kinds of symbioses, certain ways outside has of invading us and certain ways we have of meets this invasion..."

"The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.'"

"By becoming the pure subject who knows the world objectively, man ultimately realizes that absolute consciousness with respect to which the body and individual existence are no longer anything but objects; death is deprived of meaning. Reduced to the status of object of consciousness, the body could not be conceived as an intermediary between "things" and the consciousness which knows them."

"The accidents of our bodily constitution can always play this revealing role on the condition that they become a means of extending our knowledge by the consciousness which we have of them, instead of being submitted to as pure facts which dominate us. Ultimately, El Greco's supposed visual disorder was conquered by him and so profoundly integrated into his manner of thinking and being that it appears finally as the necessary expression of his being much more than as a peculiarity imposed from the outside. It is no longer a paradox to say that "El Greco was astigmatic because he produced elongated bodies." Everything which was accidental in the individual, that is, everything which revealed partial and independent dialectics without relationship to the total signification of his life, has been assimilated and centered in his deeper life. Bodily events have ceased to constitute autonomous cycles, to follow the abstract patterns of biology and psychology, and have received a new meaning."

"[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis"

"Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence."

"Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and “gives the whole show away.” The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden."

"Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself."

"The philosopher will ask himself … if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history."

"Thinking which displaces, or otherwise defines, the sacred has been called atheistic, and that philosophy which does not place it here or there, like a thing, but at the joining of things and words, will always be exposed to this reproach without ever being touched by it."

"Lichtenberg … held something of the following kind: one should neither affirm the existence of God nor deny it. … It is not that he wished to leave certain perspectives open, nor to please everyone. It is rather that he was identifying himself, for his part, with a consciousness of self, of the world, and of others that was “strange” (the word is his) in a sense which is equally well destroyed by the rival explanations."

"Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change."

"If it is permitted to the enlightened but baffled Statesman, when deserted and fallen from his place, to appeal from the voices of the moment to the judgment of more impartial times, with what right can we call in question the loftier form of the same prophetic trust which looks to a present God rather than to future men?"

"Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation."

"It was in his parting sorrow that Jesus asked his disciples to remember him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has his name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin."

"One thing alone my heart requires, — one gleam of living light amid the ashes and the gloom; that, while my penance is worked out, the face of God should not be turned away; that into my cell of humiliation the flood of divine pity should break, and keep aglow the openings of eternal hope, and sustain the hidden strength of an everlasting love."

"To him let us but cleave in all our strife; and the Tempter will flee; the wilderness will be desolate no more; angels will come and minister unto us; and when we pass thence to the ministry of life, be it to the glory of a transfiguration, the sorrows of a Gethsemane, or the sacrifice of the cross, the tranquilizing peace of God will never be far from us."

"This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good; — these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages."

"From the moment of his self-dedication, when he threw His cares away, and went forth not knowing where to lay his head, the whole energy which others spend on interests of their own was poured into his humane and divine affections, and filled his life with an enthusiasm resistless and unique. However quiet his words, it is impossible not to feel the tender depths from which they come."

"There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart."

"We cannot embrace his cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of his remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we too hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will."

"When the blessed Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, visits you and stirs the plumage of the soul, seek no cowardly shelter from it, but fling yourself upon it, and, though its sweep be awful, you shall be sustained. Only do this, do all, not in presumptuous daring, but in divine submission; in dependence, not on any strength that can be spent, but on the ever-living stay of all that trust in him."

"All spiritual strength for ourselves, all noble ties to one another, have their real source in that inner sanctuary where God denies his lonely audience to none. Its secrets are holy; its asylum, inviolate; its consolations, sure; and all are open to the simple heart-word, "Thou art my hiding-place.""

"The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life."

"The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer."

"If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind"."

"I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe, did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness."

"Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will."

"The absurdity of life cannot be resolved, but it can be terminated. We can overcome this meaningless world order by constantly letting two become one, over and over again, until the very last human being disappears; an uninhabited Earth is no misfortune."

"In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation."

"Death is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is."