#philosophy

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? ↗

— Hillel the Elder

#self-worth #self-worth

When we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt — we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts, my dear, then we are myths. But still we are together. We are the past together, we are a distant past. Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars, I still hear your voice. ↗

— Jostein Gaarder

#life #philosophy #death

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream? ↗

— Marguerite Yourcenar

#philosophy #dreams

Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#philosophy #death

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #philosophy #the-fall #death

I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life. ↗

— Martha Beck

#been #benefited #chinese #early #exposed

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#philosophy #tao-te-ching #beauty

Without living, how can you know? Without knowing, how can you speak? ↗

— J.E. Seanachaí

#life-lesson #philosophy #wisdom #writing #life

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy. ↗

— Napoleon Bonaparte

#philosophy #skepticism #virtue #well

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. ↗

— Erwin Schrödinger

#philosophy #physics #science #beauty