Category: Aphorisms by Others
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When to Stop Talking
Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night, #295: When a man perceives that the person he is talking to simply cannot see the things about which he is talking, then he should stop talking.
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Books and Their Movies
Never judge a book by its movie! (Not a MavPhil original, I am sorry to say. Source? Paging Dave Lull.)
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Seize and Squeeze
Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson: . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as…
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A Dangerous Property of Worldly Things
Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness, p. 48: Another dangerous property of worldly things is that they appear at first as mere trifles, but each of these so-called 'trifles' branches out into countless ramifications until they swallow up the whole of a man's time and energy.
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In Life as in Chess
Die Fehler sind alle schon da, sie warten nur darauf, gemacht zu werden. (Savielly Tartakower) The mistakes are already all out there just waiting to be made. (tr. BV)
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Snowflakes and ‘Liberals’ Take Heed
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." Ralph Waldo Emerson, 8 November 1838
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Paul Claudel
"The nearer we are to the mountain, the smaller we are. The nearer to eternal Sanctity, the more sinful we seem to ourselves to be." (Claudel-Gide Correspondence, p. 91)
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Nisi duae res necessariae
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The Decisive Difference between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), #689, p. 212, written in 1944: The endless chatter about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard is quite hopeless. Outward similarities set up a superficial sphere of comparison that is utterly meaningless, for they are localised and limited by a decisive difference at a deeper level; the one prayed,…
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Nothing too Small for so Small a Creature
I am petty; nothing petty is foreign to me. Or to my journal. Richard Weaver, "Life Without Prejudice" in Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965, p. 11: Upon one occasion when Boswell confessed to Johnson that he feared some things he was entering in his journal were too small, the latter…
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Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson magnificently and truly. And this from a man who lived in New England where there is no sky to speak of. What would he have written had he been able to bathe his thoughts in the lambent light of the desert Southwest?
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Style and Thought
I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his: The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44) This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman should be allowed to get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:…
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What Makes an Aphorism Good?
Reader RP submits the following aphorisms for evaluation: A very good thing about not having anyone to talk to is not having to talk to anyone. A very good thing about not having any place to go to is not having to go anyplace. The evil of loneliness becomes the good thing of solitude when…
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Benjamin Jowett on Grace
A stunning formulation for your delectation from the translator of Plato and the don of Balliol College: Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy;…