"Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another. He was just some Joseph looking for a manger."
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Philosophical quotes
Philosophical
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Philosophical quotes (page 58 of 98)
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"All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy."
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"The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions."
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"It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that."
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"As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers."
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"I have just been through the process of killing a cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for this murder, and see that such actions are inconsistent with the poetic perception, however they may serve science, and will affect the quality of my observations. I pray that I may walk more innocently and serenely through nature. No reasoning whatever reconciles me to this act. It affects my day injuriously. I have lost some self-respect. I have a murderer's experience to a degree."
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"I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all."
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"Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them."
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"If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him."
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"The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws."
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"Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems."
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"Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest."
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"Slow are the beginnings of philosophy."
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"Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays."
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"The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense."
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"There is a form of poetic and esthetic and moral genius necessary to make philosophical issues truly incandesce for students, and even though I indeed had some world-class professors myself when I went through the curriculum, I rarely saw such gnosic or concretist/poetic passion among them. I am not speaking of broad histrionics or melodramatic delivery, but rather a moral investment of concern, of loving delight and pathos in exposing one's consciousness to the full horrific and magnificent implications of the materials."
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"The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science."
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"What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man."
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"Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher."
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"At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite."
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