APHORISMS BOOK OK

SEE AFORISMARIO ***********************************************

Aphorisms are the aristocrats of thought.

My favorite collections is the Maximes of François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (“We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.” “There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness”)

The writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, too, positively sparkle with the epigrammatic and the aphoristic. (Both admired Lichtenberg.) And, of course, Pascal’s Pensées

"I never saw it that way before.”
“That’s an interesting perspective.”
“Wow, that’s deep.”
And my favorite: “I wish I’d said that!”

A

Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was born in Frankfurt in 1903 into a wealthy and cultured family. His father, a wine merchant, was of Jewish origin but had converted to Protestantism at university. Teddy (as his closest friends called him) was an extremely fine pianist from a young age. Until his twenties, he planned for a career as a composer, but eventually focused on philosophy. In 1934, he was barred, on racial grounds, from teaching in Germany. So he moved to Oxford and later to New York and then Los Angeles. He was both fascinated and repelled by Californian consumer culture – and thought with unusual depth about suntans and drive-ins. After the war, he returned to West Germany, where he died in 1969, at the age of 64.
Theodor W. Adorno believed that intellectuals should band together to change society.
Adorno drew attention to three significant ways in which capitalism corrupts and degrades us:
1. Leisure time becomes toxic
Adorno believed that the primary focus for progressive philosophers should be the study of how the working and middle classes of developed nations think and feel – and in particular, the manner in which they spend their evenings and weekends.
Adorno had a highly ambitious view of what leisure time should be for. It was not to relax and take one’s mind off things. Adorno argued that leisure had a great purpose to serve: free time – and the cultural activities we might pursue in it – was our prime opportunity to expand and develop ourselves, to reach after our own better nature, and to acquire the tools with which to change society. It was a time when we might see certain specific films that would help us to understand our relationships with new clarity, or to read philosophy and history books that could give us fresh insights into politics or to listen to the kinds of music that would give us courage to reform ourselves and collective life. Group Of Men Sunbathing But, in the modern world, Adorno bemoaned that leisure had fallen into the hands of an omnipresent and deeply malevolent entertainment machine he called ‘the culture industry,’ which occupied the same demonic place in his philosophy as religion had occupied in Marx’s. Modern films, TV, radio, magazines and now social media seemed for Adorno to be designed to keep us distracted, unable to understand ourselves and without the will to alter political reality. This was a new and catastrophically dangerous opium for the masses. For example, the news is – in Adorno’s view – simply there to feed us a mixture of salacious nonsense and political stories that scramble any possibility of understanding the open prison within which we exist. Journalists will self-righteously claim that they are giving us ‘the truth’ but they are themselves too busy, too scared of their bosses and too thoughtless to be in any position to offer such an elixir. Films for their part excite fears and desires wholly disconnected from the real challenges we face. We might spend two hours of our lives following the adventures of an alien invasion – while the real calamities of our world go unattended. Museums display works of art without allowing them to speak to the needs and aspirations of their audiences. We wander through galleries, silently admiring so-called ‘masterpieces’, while privately unsure what they really mean and why we should care. The culture industry likes to keep us like that: distracted, pliant, confused and intimidated. As for pop music, this focuses relentlessly on the emotions around Romantic love, selfishly suggesting to us that happiness can only come from meeting one very special person, rather than awakening us to the pleasures of community and of a more broadly distributed human sympathy. Walt_Disney_1946 Adorno was so strict on the cultural output of his age because he believed in the highest possibilities for culture. It wasn’t there to help us pass the time, impress the neighbours or drug us into momentary cheerfulness. It was to be nothing less than a therapeutic tool to deliver consolation, insight and social transformation. No wonder he perceptively described Walt Disney as the most dangerous man in America.

A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.

The audience has a right not to be fooled - even if it insists on being fooled.

Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have.

People know what they want because they know what other people want.

The bourgeois ... is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.

The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty.

To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults. (obscure, very profound)

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.



Aristotle

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.


B

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – circa 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran.
Bierce's book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature"; and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.
A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States, and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic.
In December 1913, Bierce traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared, and was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops. He was never seen again.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. Also: A lottery is a tax on stupidity.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. (incognoscible, inescrutable)

There would be far fewer accidents if we could only teach telephone poles to be more careful.

Ultimatum n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

 
C

Nicolas Chamfort


It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.

If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead. [last words]

He who leaves the game wins it.

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

In order not to find life unbearable, you must accept two things: the ravages of time and the injustices of man.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

Happiness is not easy to find. It's very difficult to find it in yourself — and impossible to find anywhere else.

Don't you know that we must always have a place where we never go but where we think we'd be happy if we did?

Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.



G. K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.



Marcus Tullius Cicero

A friend is, as it were, a second self. 

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body. 

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

If you want to learn, then teach. 

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

It’s amazing that one fortune-teller doesn’t laugh at the sight of another. 

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

No one can give you better advice than yourself. 

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

To live is to think.


Emil Cioran

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

We must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you; what a revelation!.




Confucius

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

If we don't know life, how can we know death?

 
D


Descartes

Conquer yourself rather than the world.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. 

I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. (Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum).

I think, therefore I am / exist. (Cogito ergo sum) 

But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.  

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.

Living without philosophising is literally (like) having your eyes closed without ever trying to open them
Being blind is like having your eyes closed all the time.

I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen. (invisible).

To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.   


Davidowitz, Arkady
Author of over 50,000 published aphorisms.
Davidowitz's recent work has made him the most successful aphorist by quantity of aphorisms created. His most recent collections include An Anthology of Wisdom, An Anthology of Thought in Aphorisms, Russian Wisdom: from Vladimir Monomakh to the present day, The New Book of Aphorisms, and The Big Book of Aphorisms. By quantity of citations, Davidowitz by far surpasses authors such as Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, Arthur Schopenhauer, and many others. In the words of Russian society commentator Andrey Bilzho, "Davidowitz knows something about life which you, dear reader, and I do not."
The Davidowitz fan club's most ambitious project, Davidowitz's Decalingua, was officially launched on 29 May 2015, aiming to translate Davidowitz's latest collection, Je Suis Davidowitz, into ten world languages: English, Spanish, Hindi, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Georgian, Polish and Hungarian.

Davidowitz is a regular contributor to the Russian Humanist Society's Common Sense magazine.
After the 2010 publication of the collection The End of the World Will End Well, Davidowitz began to be "recognised as an unrecognised genius" by an ever-widening group of people, which by summer 2012 had become a fan club.

Aphorisms are the aristocrats of thought.



Epicteto

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth / provoke your best.


Jean de La Bruyère

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.

Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker.

Love and friendship exclude each other.


François de la Rochefoucauld

The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.

We are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes.

We often pardon those that annoy us, but we cannot pardon those we annoy.

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

The intellect is always fooled by the heart.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.

We always get bored with those whom we bore.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

 
E

Albert Einstein (Skepticism)

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

Follow your curiosity, whatever that is, see where it goes.

Never be afraid to question the world around you and don't be afraid of  failing and making mistakes along the way.

Don't be afraid to conquer your fears and don't be afraid to conquer your passions.
NOTE: There is little difference between the two. The form is: "afraid of + noun/gerund" and "afraid to + verb".

Dare to discover and dare to make mistakes. That's what divides successful people from unsuccessful.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Education is what / that which remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

I Never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

If you can't explain it simply, (then) you don't understand it well enough.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

You don't have to be the next Einstein. Be the best you can be, so rise up tomorrow and become a person you would be proud of.

(The definition of) Insanity Is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Creativity is intelligence having fun.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Women marry men hoping / with the hope they will change, and men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Only a life lived for others is worth living.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather (try to become) a man of value.



 
Brian Eno

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I don't live in the past at all. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!

I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I'm always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven't thought of doing yet.


 
F

 
G


 
Baltasar Gracián

It is good to vary in order that you may frustrate the curious, especially those who envy you.

True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.

Work is the price which is paid for reputation.

Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.

Quit while you're ahead. All the best gamblers do.

The things we remember best are those better forgotten.

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.

Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.

Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.

Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.

 
H

William Hazlitt

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.

Heraclito

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Character is destiny.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it - and sometimes three.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Nothing endures but change.

Change alone is unchanging.

There is nothing permanent except change.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

I

J

Stanisław Jerzy Lec

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

Even the masochists tell everything when tortured. From sheer gratitude.

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

People find life entirely too time-consuming.

You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.

The greater the dark, the easier to be a star.

We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing.

Satirists, be careful. In the 1931 film by Rene Clair “Vive la Liberte” a song says, “Work is freedom.” In 1940 the sign on the gates to Auschwitz said: “Arbeit macht frei.”

 
Joseph Joubert. ("The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert").

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

He / One who has imagination without learning has wings without / but no feet.

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

To teach is to learn twice.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Children need models rather than critics.

Work like you don't need the money.

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.

Those readiest to criticize are often least able to appreciate.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

 
K
 
Søren Kierkegaard

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way.

Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Don't forget to love yourself.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

 
L

 
Lao-Tse

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

Do you want to improve the world? I don't think it can be done.

The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.

To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on.

A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.

He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty.

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?.

The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.

Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear.
figurative (victory, argument: meaningless): vacio, hueco. 

Love is a decision, not an emotion!


Leonardo Da Vinci.

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

 
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Patriarca del aforismo moderno
(1 July 1742, Gotinga – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, writer, satirist, and Anglophile; best known for his satirical wit ridiculing metaphysical and romantic excesses.
"The notebooks" contain quotations that struck Lichtenberg, titles of books to read, autobiographical sketches, and short or long reflections, including keen observations on human nature. Those reflections helped him earn his posthumous fame as one of the best aphorists in Western intellectual history. He was not a professional philosopher, and had no need to present, or to have, any consistent philosophy.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.

He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all. (leading, causing, or contributing to a result): Exercise is conducive to good health.

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.  (expression, wording). Giro.

 
M


Marco Aurelio

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.


Michel de Montaigne (essayist and founder of modern skepticism).

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

I quote others only to better express myself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering (from) what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

 
N

Friedrich Nietzsche

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

To marry means to halve your rights and double the duties.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

He who has a (strong enough) why (to live) can bear almost any how.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole book.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

Success has always been a great / the greatest liar.

The best friend is likely to acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is based on the talent for friendship.

The man loves danger and sport. That is why he loves woman, the most dangerous of all sports.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

There are no facts but only interpretations.

There is (way/far/much) more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

That which doesn't kill us (just) makes us stronger.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

What doesn't kill you (only / just) makes you stronger. I really believe that.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we (thought we had) conquered long ago.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

O

P

Blaise Pascal
Mathematician, Theologian, Physicist (1623–1662)
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.
Mathematician Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, France. In the 1640s he invented the Pascaline, an early calculator. Pascal is also widely known for his body of notes posthumously released as the Pensées. He died in Paris on August 19, 1662.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

Vanity is but the surface.


Plato

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Marcel Proust

The (only real) voyage of discovery consists / is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Love is a reciprocal torture.

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.


R


S


Jean-Paul Sartre

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are, that is the fact.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live. (solve, explain, understand)

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

We do not judge the people we love.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

If I became a philosopher, it's all been to seduce women basically.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.


Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Life is like a play. It's not its length but its performance that counts.


Arthur Schopenhauer (The art of leaving). Epic quotes.

The safest / surest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

(A) man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

What / That which makes men sociable is their inability to bear solitude, and therefore themselves.

Wealth is like sea water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

(There is) one paradox of professional writing (is that). It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.

Anyone who has never owned a dog can’t know what loving and being loved mean.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Immediately / Directly after copulation, the devil's laughter is heard.


Fernando Sabater

We cannot do anything for the people we love, except to keep on loving them. Fernando Savater

Mi sueño es el de Picasso; tener mucho dinero para vivir tranquilo como los pobres.

La inteligencia debe saber reír.

La muerte sirve para hacernos pensar, pero no sobre la muerte sino sobre la vida.


Sócrates  
As for me, all I know is (that) I know nothing.
 
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
 
Be yourself. Be/Become who/what you are.  
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing. 

Know yourself. An unexamined life is not worth living.  

There is only one good, knowledge, and (only) one evil, ignorance.


T

León Tolstói 

I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

If you want to be happy, be.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

All happy families are alike / resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. Anna Karenina.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels? Anna Karenina

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. War and Peace.


Eckhart Tolle

You are not a problem that needs solving.


U


V

Paul Valéry

The trouble with (living in) our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

Love is being stupid together.

Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising.

I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

Beauty is what leads to desperation.


Ludwig Wittgenstein

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
(1. whereof, conj. form. literary: of what, de lo que; 2. thereof, adv. formal (of it) del mismo, de esto loc adv, de eso loc adv.).

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

A confession has to be part of your new life.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
‎ 

Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Y

Z

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Zoroaster, Laozi, Mahavira, Gautama Buddha, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Jesus, Epictetus, , Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Hafez, Linji Yixuan, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Carl Jung.