Category: Aphorisms by Others
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Dolce far Niente
It is sweet to do nothing, but only if if the inactivity comes like the caesura in a line of poetry or the punctuation in a sentence of prose or the rest in a piece of music. Inactivity extended stultifies. At least this is true here below. Genesis 3:19 may be read as 'sentencing' us…
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Gratitude is the Memory of the Heart
A masterpiece of the aphorist's art. Attributed to Jean Massieu (1772-1846). Related articles Robert Nisbet's Conservatism
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Camus on Crybullies, Safe Spaces, and Trigger Warnings
Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, p. 73: Too much security for the child's heart, and the adult will spend his life demanding this security from people — even though people are only opportunities for risk and freedom. Related articles Remembering Albert Camus Continental Philosophers I Respect and the 'Continental-Analytic Divide'
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Of Socialism, Violets, and Asphalt
Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 61: Socialism, according to Zochtchenko, will be when violets grow on asphalt. Bernie Sanders take note. Translator's footnote: Mikhail Zochtchenko (1895-1962), Soviet writer and humorist persecuted by Stalin. Related articles Remembering Albert Camus Albert Camus, <i>Notebooks</i> 1951-1959 Continental Philosophers I Respect and…
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Muslim and Marxist
Muslim: There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet. Marxist: There is no God and Marx is his prophet.
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People, Guns, and Reference
I had the pleasure of Dale Tuggy's presence here for a couple of days. He got off a neat comparison that hadn't occurred to me, but one I fully endorse: Just as guns don't kill people, but people kill people using guns, so too words don't refer to things, but people refer to things using…
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Self-Control and Self-Esteem
"Self-control is infinitely more important that self-esteem." (Dennis Prager) Delete 'infinitely' and you have an important truth pithily and accurately expressed. With self-control one can develop attributes that justify one's self-esteem. Without it one may come to an untimely end as did Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, who brought about his own death through a…
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Morality on a Full Stomach
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral. (Bertolt Brecht) Loosely translated, "First feed, then scruple." Something similar in Horace. Quaerenda pecunia primum est; virtus post nummos. (Horace, Epistles I, 1, 53) Money is to be sought first of all; virtue after wealth. Or, loosely translated, cash before conscience.
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Hard Childhood, Strong Man
Emmanuel Lasker, Die Philosophie des Unvollendbar, 1919, p. x: Aber eine harte Kindheit macht einen starken Mann. But a hard childhood makes a strong man. In the '80s I read a chunk of Lasker's Philosophy of the Incompletable and concluded that the grandmaster of chess was not one of philosophy. But I didn't read much…
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If You Understood Me, You Would Agree with Me!
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 204, Notebook K, Aph. #84: To call a proposition into question all that is needed is very often merely to fail to understand it. Certain gentlemen have been all too ready to reverse this maxim, and to assert that…
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Still Perfect After All These Years
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 223, Notebook L, Aph. #67: If we did not remember our youth, we should [would] not be aware of old age: the malady of age consists solely in our no longer being able to do what we could do…
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Why Lichtenberg is not on Facebook
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 162, Notebook J, Aph. #168, hyperlink added! As soon as he receives a little applause many a writer believes that the world is interested in everything about him. The play-scribbler Kotzebue even thinks himself justified in telling the public…
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The Art of the Aphorism
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollindale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 156: He despises me because he does not know me, and I despise his accusations because I know myself. Related articles 'I am not a spy. I am a philosopher.'
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My Kind of Guy
Desiderius Erasmus is often quoted as saying, "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." The closest I have come to verifying this attribution or misattribution is here: Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque, ut pecuniam acceptero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.…