Connor > Connor's Quotes

“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.”
― Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It.

“The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.”
― Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It.

“As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky...”
― Herodotus

“A bad peace is worse than war.”
― Tacitus

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.”
― Plotinus

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“I grew up in the arms of the gods.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“That which Dante saw written on the door of the inferno must be written in a different sense also at the entrance to philosophy: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Those who look for true philosophy must be bereft of all hope, all desire, all longing. They must not wish for anything, not know anything, must feel completely bare and impoverished.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“this is love. I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other and I AM only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me; and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. This is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of this distinction, one speaks emptily of it.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.”
― Thomas More, Utopia

“Die Natur soll der sichtbare Geist, der Geist die unsichtbare Natur sein. Hier also, in der absoluten Identität des Geistes in uns und der Natur außer uns, muß sich das Problem, wie eine Natur außer uns möglich sei, auflösen.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Sociability belongs to the most dangerous, even destructive inclinations, since it brings us into contact with beings the great majority of whom are morally bad and intellectually dull or perverted.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
― Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery

“پر كن پياله را
كاين آب آتشين
ديريست ره به حال خرابم نمي‌برد

اين جام‌ها كه در پي هم مي‌شوند
درياي آتش است كه ‌ريزم به كام خويش
گردآب مي‌ربايد و آبم نمي‌برد

من با سمند سركش و جادويي شراب
تا بيكران عالم پندار رفته‌ام
تا دشت پر ستاره‌ي انديشه‌هاي گرم
تا مرز ناشناخته‌ي مرگ و زندگي
تا كوچه باغ خاطره‌هاي گريز پا
تا شهر يادها
ديگر شراب هم جز تا كنار بستر خوابم نمي‌برد

هان اي عقاب عشق!
از اوج قله‌هاي مه آلود دوردست
پرواز كن به دشت غم‌انگيز عمر من
آنجا ببر مرا كه شرابم نمي برد
آن بي ستاره‌ام كه عقابم نمي برد

در راه زندگي
با اين همه تلاش و تمنا و تشنگي
با اينكه ناله مي‌كشم از دل كه :
آب ... آب ...
ديگر فريب هم به سرابم نمي برد

پر كن پياله را ”
― فریدون مشیری

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II