Category: Aphorisms and Observations
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Life’s Chess
The opening is hopeful and the middle game absorbing. But then comes a series of checks culminating in mate.
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Immortality
Which is better: to inquire whether there is immortality, or to live in such a way as to deserve it? Both are good, but the second is better.
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Stumbling Block or Stepping Stone?
One man's stumbling block is another's stepping stone. The philosopher, the believer, the cross.
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The Highest Mastery
The highest mastery is self-mastery, and the highest self-mastery is thought-mastery. He who controls his thoughts controls the seeds of words and deeds.
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(Not) Another Aphorism
You actuallyCrawled out of bedCompromising your restTo write down anotherOf yourWretched aphorisms?
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Happiness
Not all of our happiness is made by thought, but a good deal of it is — a fact to make one happy.
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Politicization and Hypostatization
Something that in its very nature is political cannot be politicized. (Example here.) Similarly, that which in its mode of being is substantial cannot be hypostatized or reified. Hypostatization is illicit reification.
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No Man a Hero to His Valet
No man is a hero to his valet, but some are to their wives.
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On Aphorisms, Aphoristically
A good aphorism is the tip of an iceberg of thought. One gets the point but is spared the substantiation.
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On Taking Principles to Extremes
That a principle can be taken to an extreme is no argument against the principle so taken. It is rather an argument against extremism. The principle that one has the right to keep and bear arms, for example, is not refuted by the fact that some will take it to mean that one has the…
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A Philosopher’s Last Words
What I haven't been able to learn by living I now hope to learn by dying.
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God Did a Good Job
Too good of a job, perhaps: the world is so well made that it appears not to have been made at all.
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Why Are We Here?
We are not here to improve the world but to be improved by it.
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The Monkees are to the Beatles . . .
. . . as Maynard G. Krebs is to Neal Cassady. (That works, doesn't it? With apologies to Davy Jones, RIP.)