Topics · Mind & Meaning
Wisdom about philosophy.
What people have learned about philosophy the hard way, and what the classics said about it first.
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From the library
All that glisters is not gold.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
I exist as I am, that is enough.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
There is no wealth but life.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
The cautious seldom err.
The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive.
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark.
The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror.
The Tao, considered as unchanging, has no name.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
A great man is always willing to be little.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
I am large, I contain multitudes.
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are.
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The truth shall make you free.
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
Governing a great state is like cooking small fish.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Men come forth and live; they enter (again) and die.
This above all: to thine own self be true.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
The soft overcomes the hard; and the weak the strong.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Gravity is the root of lightness; stillness, the ruler of movement.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
It is by avoiding such indulgence that such weariness does not arise.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.