Philosophy

"By faith Noah, after receiving divine warning of things not yet seen, showed godly fear and constructed an ark for the saving of his household; and through this faith he condemned the world, and he became an heir of the righteousness that results from faith."

"Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem; The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream."

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

"The world is large, when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide; But the world is small, when your enemy is loose on the other side."

"Think, in this battered Caravanserai, Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp Abode his destined Hour, and went his way."

"We look at this as the best of all possible worlds, but the French know it isn't, because most people speak English."

"This outer world is but the pictured scroll Of worlds within the soul; A colored chart, a blazoned missal-book, Whereon who rightly look May spell the splendors with their mortal eyes, And steer to Paradise."

"This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,— There's nothing true but Heaven."

"Or may I think when toss'd in trouble, This world at best is but a bubble."

"Is it not a noble farce wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the vast universe serves for a theatre?"

"Le monde n'est qu'une bransloire perenne."

"The Doctor: There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace. We’ve got work to do."

"To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R.E.M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid."

"If you have been inside my head, then you know what I've seen. The suffering. Every moment in time and space is burning. It must end, and I intend to end it the only way I can."

"The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

"Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O World.""

"A boundless continent, Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night Starless expos'd."

"Hanging in a golden chain This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon."

"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth."

"The world's a stage on which all parts are played."

"I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something. To break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die."

"This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above, And if we did our duty, it might be as full of love."

"The world in all doth but two nations bear, The good, the bad, and these mixed everywhere."

"When the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that are not heaven."

"Flammantia mœnia mundi."

"One day with life and heart, Is more than time enough to find a world."

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

"Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. There lies the Land of Song; there lies the poet's native land."

"O what a glory doth this world put on For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks On duties well performed, and days well spent!"

"I was borne on an eagle's wing, Till with the noon-sun perishing; Then I stood in a world alone, From which all other life was gone, Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled, A world o'er which a curse was said: The trees stood leafless all, and bare, The sky spread, but no sun was there: Night came, no stars were on her way, Morn came without a look of day,— As night and day shared one pale shroud, Without a colour or a cloud. And there were rivers, but they stood Without a murmur on the flood, Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,— The sea lay silent on the shore, Without a sign upon its breast Save of interminable rest: And there were palaces and halls, But silence reign'd amid their walls, Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound Rose from the thousands gather'd round; All wore the same white, bloodless hue, All the same eyes of glassy blue, Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those No gentle hand was near to close. And all seem'd, as they look'd on me, In wonder that I yet could be A moving shape of warmth and breath Alone amid a world of death."

"It is an ugly world. Offend Good people, how they wrangle, The manners that they never mend, The characters they mangle. They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, And go to church on Sunday— And many are afraid of God— And more of Mrs. Grundy."

"If all the world must see the world As the world the world hath seen, Then it were better for the world That the world had never been."

""Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" is the greatest phrase ever written. If everyone followed that creed, this world would be a paradise."

"For to admire an' for to see, For to be'old this world so wide— It never done no good to me, But I can't drop it if I tried!"

"The world goes up and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown Can never come over again, Sweet wife. No, never come over again."

"Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena in a unified way, in terms of a few simple principles."

"In Islam, there is no priesthood, and no intermediary between the creature and The Creator; but every Muslim from the ends of earth or in the paths of the sea has the ability of himself to approach his Lord without priest or minister. Nor again can the Muslim administrator derive his authority from any papacy, or from Heaven; but he derives it solely from the Muslim community. Similarly, he derives his principles of administration from the religious law, which is universal in its understanding and application and before which all men come everywhere as equals."

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.All our dignity consists then in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor to think well; this is the principle of morality."

"God does not love that which is already in itself worthy of love, but on the contrary, that which in itself has no worth acquires worth just by becoming the object of God's love. Agape has nothing to do with the kind of love that depends on the recognition of a valuable quality in its object. Agape does not recognize value, but creates it. Agape loves, and imparts value by loving. The man who is loved by God has no value in himself; what gives him value is precisely the fact that God loves him. Agape is a value-creating principle."

"[Many historians of morality,] Mostly Englishmen, … affirm some consensus of the nations, at least of the tame nations, concerning certain principles of morals, and then they infer from this that these principles must be unconditionally binding also for you and me; or, conversely, they see the truth that among different nations moral valuations are necessarily different and then infer from this that no morality is at all binding. Both procedures are equally childish."

"I wish to establish some sort of system not guided by chance but by some sort of definite and exact principle."

"Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort."

"I don't believe in princerple, But, oh, I du in interest."

"When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking."

"Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle."

"The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience."

"If the ruling class thinks that by hanging us, hanging a few anarchists, they can crush out anarchy, they will be badly mistaken, because the anarchist loves his principles more than his life."

"Unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill?"

"Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos."

"Precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle. The principle may be right or may be wrong—that is a question for discussion; but at the first glance it is right to conclude that it is a principle that has been acted upon and recognised by those who preceded us."