#th

Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#great #great passions #great things #only #passions

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#between #nothing #relations #sciences #signs

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#ephemeral #ever #motive #outlasts #particular

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. ↗

— Thomas A. Edison

#best #done #solitude #thinking #turmoil

There is no teacher, living or past, who can give us the actual understanding of Truth. A teacher can only put our feet upon the path and point the way. That is all. It is wholly dependent on the individual to make his way to Truth. ↗

— Paul Twitchell

#actual #dependent #feet #give #his

Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death. ↗

— de Selby

#death #flann-o-brien #hallucinations #reality #the-third-policeman

It is better to be killed than frightened to death. ↗

— R.S. Surtees

#death

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever...I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#beauty-in-literature #freedom #freedom-of-expression #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#does #inconvenient #moral #precept #something

Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price. ↗

— Joan Didion

#having #price #question #recognizing #self-respect