My Blog

Tag: self

  • No two opinions exactly alike

    “Never did two men judge alike about the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in different men, but in the same man at different times.” III.13 “Of experience” (p. 995)

  • Contraction of the mind

    “There is no end to our researches; our end is in the other world. It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its powers of achievement. If…

  • I have chosen to say what I know how to say

    “I have chosen to say what I know how to say, accommodating the matter to my power. If I took a subject that would lead me along, I might not be able to measure up to it; with my freedom being so very free, I might publish judgements which, even according to my own opinion…

  • To listen to ourselves

    “The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor’s or an ordinary man’s, it is still a life subject to all human accidents. Let us only listen: we tell ourselves all we most need.” III.13 Of experience (p. 1001)

  • 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…

  • 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.”…

  • A book consubstantial with its author

    I have no more made my book than my book has made me — a book consubstantial with its author […] For those who go over themselves only in their minds and occasionally in speech do not penetrate to essentials in their examination as does a man who makes his study, his work, and his…

  • Seek not the world

    “Seek no longer that the world should speak of you, but how you should speak to yourself.” I.39 “Of solitude” (p. 221)

  • All contradictions may be found in me

    “anyone who observes carefully can hardly find himself twice in the same state. … If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever,…