My Blog

Tag: perspective

  • School of stupidity

    “Isn’t that what we say, that the stupidity and lack of apprehension of the vulgar gives them this endurance of present troubles and this profound nonchalance about sinister accidents to come, that their souls, because they are thick and obtuse, are less penetrable and unstable? For Heaven’s sake, if that is so, let us henceforth…

  • For the benefit of the inferior

    “The authority to judge is not given for the sake of the judge, but for the sake of the person judged. A superior is never appointed for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the inferior, and a doctor for the sick, not for himself. All authority, like all art, has its end outside…

  • The most learned man alive

      “At least I have one thing according to the rules: that no man ever treated a subject he knew and understood better than I do the subject I have undertaken; and that in this I am the most learned man alive. Secondly, that no man ever penetrated more deeply into his material, or plucked…

  • Life is full of fireworks

    ““Life is full of fireworks; death, of love and courtesy.” II.35 “Of three good women” (p 683)

  • We are nothing but ceremony

    “We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.”   II.17 “Of presumption” (581).

  • Our minute distinctions

    “… the world lets itself be so easily tricked, believing that our losses affect heaven, and that its infinity is impassioned about our minute distinctions.” II.13 “Of judging of the death of others” (p. 558)

  • I exist only within myself

    “As for me, I hold that I exist only in myself; and as for that other life of mine that lies in the knowledge of my friends, considering it naked and simply in itself, I know very well that I feel no fruit or enjoyment from it except by the vanity of a fanciful opinion.”…

  • Whatever side we lean to

    “Because in human matters, whatever side we lean to, we find many probabilities to confirm us in it…” II.17 “Of presumption” (pp. 603)

  • We are all patchwork

    “We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.” II.1 “Of the inconsistency of our actions” (p. 296)  

  • Actions from neighboring circumstances

    “The surest thing, in my opinion, would be to trace our actions to the neighboring circumstances, without getting into any further research and without drawing from them any other conclusions.” II.1 “Of the inconsistency of our actions” (p. 292) [Makes me think of relational personalities instead of individual. Self as husband, father, son, brother, professor,…