Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn't care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don't need to be convinced that the system is rotten, only, that there's something they can do about it. And at any rate, even if it were possible to have an anticapitalist revolution without gun-battles in the streets -- which most of us are hoping it is, since let's face it, if we come up against the US army, we will lose -- there's no possible way we could have an anticapitalist revolution while at the same time scrupulously respecting property rights. Yes, that will probably mean the suburban middle class will be the last to come on board. But they would probably be the last to come on board anyway.
We may have a confident hope of our salvation when we apply ourselves to relieve the souls in purgatory, so afflicted and so dear to God.--ST. ALPHONSUS.
Solitude can be well applied and sit right upon but very few persons. They must have knowledge of the world to see the follies of it, and virtue enough to despise all the vanity.
Je vous apprendrai a vivre=--I will teach you better manners (
Diseases, desperate grown, / By desperate appliance are relieved, / Or not at all.
Mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares. And if in the contemplation and definition of one subject a second subject intervenes,--as happens when the mind is filled with an object,--in such cases he must decide which of the two objects is the more difficult of definition, and pursue that one until he arrives at perfect clearness of definition, and then turn to the definition of the other. And above all things his mind should be like the surface of the mirror, which shows as many colours as there are objects it reflects; and his companions should study in the same manner, and if such cannot be found he should meditate in solitude with himself, and he will not find more profitable company.
Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory — the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.
When Arthur first in court began, And was approved king.
Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,--that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.--_Johnson._
We should manage our fortune like our constitution; enjoy it when good, have patience when bad, and never apply violent remedies but in cases of necessity.
If a man wishes to become rich, he must appear rich.
Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost Minute by minute, day by dragging day, In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways, The smooth appeasing compromises of time, Which are King Herod and King Herod's men, Always and always. Life can be Lost without vision but not lost by death, Lost by not caring, willing, going on Beyond the ragged edge of fortitude To something more — something no man has ever seen.
Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mecontents, et un ingrat=--Every time I appoint to a vacant post, I make a hundred discontented and one ungrateful.
"And for that he will make alliance with him and give his daughter,"--Cleopatra, in order that she may betray her husband. On which Appian says that doubtful of being able to make himself master of Egypt by force, because of the protection of the Romans, he wished to attempt it by craft. "He would fain corrupt her, but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him. After this shall he turn his face unto the isles,"--that is to say, the sea-ports,--"and shall take many,"--as Appian relates.
Alpha sets the scale of nature -- the size of atoms and all things made of them, the intensity and colors of light, the strength of magnetism, and the metabolic rate of life itself. It controls everything that we see. ... In 137, apparently, science had found Nature's PIN Code.
Good digestion wait on appetite, / And health on both.
In the language of the Stoa, "Nature" was a word of many meanings. There was the "Nature" of the cosmos, and the "Nature" of man. In the latter, the animal "nature," which man shares with a moiety of the living part of the cosmos, was distinguished from a higher "nature." Even in this higher nature there were grades of rank. The logical faculty is an instrument which may be turned to account for any purpose. The passions and the emotions are so closely tied to tne lower nature that they may be considered to be pathological, rather than normal, phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic, faculty, which constitutes the essential "nature" of man, is most nearly represented by that which, in the language of a later philosophy, has been called the pure reason. It is this "nature" which holds up the ideal of the supreme good and demands absolute submission of the will to its behests. It is this which commands all men to love one another, to return good for evil, to regard one another as fellow-citizens of one great state. Indeed, seeing that the progress towards perfection of a civilised state, or polity, depends on the obedience of its members to these commands, the Stoics sometimes termed the pure reason the "political" nature. Unfortunately, the sense of the adjective has undergone so much modification that the application of it to that which commands the sacrifice of self to the common good would now sound almost grotesque.
It is not a question whether one order of study or another should predominate. It is a question of what topics of education you shall select which will combine all the needful elements in such due proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, support, and encouragement to those faculties which enable us to appreciate truth, and to profit by those sources of innocent happiness which are open to us, and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and ugly, and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls and dangers which beset those who break through the natural or moral laws.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Plausibus ex ipsis populi, l?toque furore, / ingenium quodvis incaluisse potest=--At the applauses of the public, and at its transports of joy, every genius may grow warm.
The apparel oft proclaims the man.
Cannot beauty and utility be combined--as appears in citadels and men?
I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.
Nothing is more real than this, nothing more terrible. Brave it out as we may, that is yet the end which awaits the fairest life in the world. Let us reflect on this, and then say if it be not certain that there is no good in this life save in the hope of another, that we are happy only in proportion as we approach it, and that as there is no more sorrow for those who have an entire assurance of eternity, so there is no happiness for those who have not a ray of its light.
The benevolent heart will not solicit, but command our reverence and applause.
What does it mean to trust, and how do I become more trusting? What I know so far is this: when I approach life’s uncertainty with a willingness to not know the answers, more is possible than I could ever dream of.
Moreover, in the fresh-water rotten-stone beds of Bilin, Ehrenberg had traced out the metamorphosis, effected apparently by the action of percolating water, of the primitively loose and friable deposit of organized particles, in which the silex exists in the hydrated or soluble condition. The silex, in fact undergoes solution and slow redeposition, until, in ultimate result, the excessively finegrained sand, each particle of which is a skeleton, becomes converted into a dense opaline stone, with only here and there an indication of an organism.
If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human workmanship, we should call skill, is visible in those parts of the organization of a deer to which it owes its ability to escape from beasts of prey, there is at least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of the wolf which enables him to track, and sooner or later to bring down, the deer. Viewed under the dry light of science, deer and wolf are alike admirable; and, if both were non-sentient automata, there would be nothing to qualify our admiration of the action of the one on the other. But the fact that the deer suffers, while the wolf inflicts suffering, engages our moral sympathies. We should call men like the deer innocent and good, men such as the wolf malignant and bad; we should call those who defended the deer and aided him to escape brave and compassionate, and those who helped the wolf in his bloody work base and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judgments to nature outside the world of man at all, we must do so impartially. In that case, the goodness of the right hand which helps the deer, and wickedness of the left hand which eggs on the wolf, will neutralize one another: and the course of nature will appear to be neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral.
Argumentum ad crumenam=--An appeal to self-interest.
He noticed her eyes especially were beautiful, well-shaped and of an odd color. “I’ve never seen anybody with eyes the color of yours,” he said. “They are from my mother, I guess. Almost everyone in Jericho has dark eyes, but my mother was a slave. She used to tell me about her home where she was born. There was ice and snow there. Very cold. Her hair was light and her eyes were blue. She died some time ago.” Othniel could not help but admire the woman’s appearance. The lamp was burning, and the yellow light was kind to her, showing the full, soft lines of her body. He noticed also that her face was very expressive. Her feelings showed immediately on her face. She did not smile much, but when she did her whole expression lit up. He wanted to ask her about herself,
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling--a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.
Felix Plater notes of some young physicians, that study to cure diseases, catch them themselves, will be sick, and appropriate all symptoms they find related of others to their own persons.
Each window like a pill'ry appears, With heads thrust thro' nail'd by the ears.
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
So how do you count in Happiness? It’s a little different, but just as easy to learn. In Happiness, you count by making a list of five things that make you happy. Do this daily. Some things will appear on your list every day, and some things will be new from one day to the next.
Just as "dirt is something in its wrong place," so social evils are mainly wrong applications of right powers.
_For Port Royal to-morrow. Prosopopæa._--"It is in vain, O men, that you seek from yourselves the remedy for your miseries. All your light can only enable you to know that not in yourselves will you find truth or good. The Philosophers promised you these, but gave them not. They neither apprehend what is your true good nor what is....
The moral of Snow White is never eat apples.
Idleness is an appendix to nobility.
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
~Simplicity.~--Simplicity is doubtless a fine thing, but it often appeals only to the simple. Art is the only passion of true artists. Palestrina's music resembles the music of Rossini, as the song of the sparrow is like the cavatina of the nightingale. Choose.--_Madame de Girardin._
The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all.
As steady application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.--_Samuel Smiles._
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
The social leaders who refuse to allow politics into society are as foreseeing as the soldiers who refuse to allow politics to permeate the army. Society is like the sexual appetite; one does not know at what forms of perversion it may not arrive, once we have allowed our choice to be dictated by aesthetic considerations.
One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.… Our 20th Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors; our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant.… Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.… The young, at an age when they have not yet any experience other than sexual, when they do not yet have years of personal suffering and personal understanding behind them, are jubilantly repeating our depraved Russian blunders of the 19th Century, under the impression that they are discovering something new. They acclaim the latest wretched degradation on the part of the Chinese Red Guards as a joyous example. In shallow lack of understanding of the age-old essence of mankind, in the naive confidence of inexperienced hearts they cry: Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones (we), having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.… But of those who have lived more and understand, those who could oppose these young—many do not dare oppose, they even suck up, anything not to appear conservative. Another Russian phenomenon of the 19th Century which Dostoyevsky called slavery to progressive quirks.… The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.… The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices. [ The Wall Street Journal , September 6, 1972, p. 14.]
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
'Tis only woman's womanly beauty that makes a true queen; wherever she appears, and by her mere presence, she asserts her sovereignty.
The prophecies, the very miracles and proofs of our Religion, are not of such a nature that we can say they are absolutely convincing. But they are also of such a kind, that none can say that it is unreasonable to believe in them. Thus there is both evidence and obscurity to enlighten some and blind others; but the evidence is such that it surpasses or at least equals the evidence to the contrary, so that it is not reason which can determine us not to follow it, and therefore it can only be lust and malice of heart. And by this means there is evidence enough to condemn, and not enough to convince; so it appears in those who follow it, that it is grace and not reason which causes them to follow it; and in those who fly it, it is lust, not reason, which causes them to fly it.
Vel c?co appareat=--Even a blind man could perceive it.
To some any attempt to trace back the name and concept of Jehovah to the same hidden sources from which other nations derived their first intimation of deity may seem almost sacrilegious. They forget the difference between the human concept of the Deity and the Deity itself, which is beyond the reach of all human concepts. But the historian reads deeper lessons in the growth of these human concepts, as they spring up everywhere in the minds of men who have been seekers after truth--seeking the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him--and when he can show the slow but healthy growth of the noblest and sublimest thoughts out of small and apparently insignificant beginnings, he rejoices as the labourer rejoices over his golden harvest; nay, he often wonders what is more truly wonderful, the butterfly that soars up to heaven on its silvery wings, or the grub that hides within its mean chrysalis such marvellous possibilities.
Nothing is more offensive to reason= (_widerwartiger_) =than an appeal to the majority; it consists of a few powerful leaders, of rogues who accommodate themselves, of weaklings who assimilate themselves, and of the mass who follow confusedly, without in the least knowing what they would be at.
So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper—but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude.
His tongue / Dropp'd manna, and could make the worse appear / The better reason, to perplex and dash / Maturest counsels.
All that God allows not is forbidden; sins are forbidden by the general declaration that God has made, that he allows them not. Other things which he has left without general prohibition, and which for that reason are said to be permitted, are nevertheless not always permitted; for when God removes any one of them from us, and when, by the event, which is a manifestation of the will of God, it appears that God allows not that we should have a thing, that is then forbidden to us as sin, since the will of God is that we should not have one more than the other. There is this sole difference between these two things, that it is certain God will never allow sin, while it is not certain that he will never allow the other. But so long as God allows it not, we must look upon it as sin, so long as the absence of God's will, which alone is all goodness and all justice, renders it unjust and evil.
To the exiled wanderer how godlike / The friendly countenance of man appears.
Se laisser prendre aux apparences=--To let one's self be imposed on by appearances.
By nothing do men more show what they are than by their appreciation of what is and what is not ridiculous.
It is the fate of the great ones of the earth to begin to be appreciated by us only after they are gone.
I always disagree … when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence. In the same way, a man can kill a tiger because he is not like a tiger and uses his brain to invent the rifle, which no tiger could ever do.
Chaque demain apporte son pain=--Every to-morrow supplies its own loaf.
Man must discover that God is his father before he can become a son of God. To know is here to be, to be to know. No mere miracle will make man the son of God. That sonship can be gained through knowledge only, 'through man knowing God, or rather being known of God,' and till it is so gained it does not exist, even though it be a fact. If we apply this to the words in which Christ speaks of Himself as the Son of God, we shall see that to Him it is no miracle, it is no mystery, it is no question of supernatural contrivance; it is simply clear knowledge, and it was this self-knowledge which made Christ what He was, it was this which constituted His true, His eternal divinity.
The first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step, created society. But, in establishing peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for existence. Between the members of that society, at any rate, it was not to be pursued _à outrance_. And of all the successive shapes which society has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which the war of individual against individual is most strictly limited. The primitive savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever took his fancy, and killed whosoever opposed him, if he could. On the contrary, the ideal of the ethical man is to limit his freedom of action to a sphere in which he does not interfere with the freedom of others; he seeks the common weal as much as his own; and, indeed, as an essential part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and means with him; and he founds his life on a more or less complete self-restraint, which is the negation of the unlimited struggle for existence. He tries to escape from his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the free development of the principle of non-moral evolution, and to establish a kingdom of Man, governed upon the principle of moral evolution. For society not only has a moral end, but in its perfection, social life, is embodied morality.