Week 2023-30: Kahlil Gibran - Collected Quotes

"Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"Perhaps the sea's definition of a shell is the pearl." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle." (Kahlil Gibran)

"And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Knowledge and understanding are life's faithful companions who will never prove untrue to you. For knowledge is your crown, and understanding your staff; and when they are with you, you possess no greater treasures." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Life without Love is like a tree without blossom and fruit." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow." (Kahlil Gibran)

"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves." (Kahlil Gibran)

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." (Kahlil Gibran)

Week 2023-29: Plutarch of Chaeronea - Collected Quotes

"For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Lives")

"For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Moralia" ["Morals"], cca. 1st century)

"If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Moralia" ["Morals"], cca. 1st century)

"It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Life of Agesilaus II")

"Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Moralia" ["Morals"], cca. 1st century)

"The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Lives")

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Moralia" ["Morals"], cca. 1st century)

"The two most powerful agencies in man's nature are reason and mind." (Plutarch of Chaeronea)

"To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Life of Fabius")

"Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Lives")

"Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities." (Plutarch of Chaeronea, "Moralia" ["Morals"], cca. 1st century)

Week 2023-28: Oliver Goldsmith - Collected Quotes

"People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Bee", 1759)

"In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can't be perfectly right." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Oliver Goldsmith", 1780)

"All that philosophy can teach is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792)

"Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly should still be new." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792)

"If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?" (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792) 

"Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792)

"Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792)

"The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused in but a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith", 1792)

'Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity." (Oliver Goldsmith, "A history of the earth: and animated nature", 1813)

"A man's own heart must ever be given to gain that of another." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Vicar of Wakefield, a Tale: To which is Annexed The Deserted Village", 1828)

"Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Complete Works of Oliver Goldsmith", 1893)

"Teaching by lecture makes men mere scholars, but instructing by examination makes them learned: the student has the best chance of becoming actually great." (Oliver Goldsmith)

Week 2023-27: Democritus - Collected Quotes

"By convention sweet, by convention bitter; by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality, atoms and void." (Democritus)

"By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich." (Democritus)

"Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity." (Democritus)

"Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss." (Democritus)

"I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia." (Democritus)

"If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it." (Democritus)

"It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others." (Democritus)

"It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new." (Democritus)

"It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all." (Democritus)

"Men should strive to think much and know little." (Democritus)

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." (Democritus)

"Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning."  (Democritus)

"No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge." (Democritus)

"Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe." (Democritus)

"Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry." (Democritus)

"The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist." (Democritus)

"The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged." (Democritus)

"There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom." (Democritus)

"Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains." (Democritus)

Week 2023-26: Plotinus - Collected Quotes

"All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works by imitating nature, we must tell him, first, that natural things are imitations too. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitate what they see, but they run back up to the forming principles from which nature derives" (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"Conscious apprehension seems to exist […] as happens in a mirror-image when the smooth and bright surface is peaceful." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

“In the same way as regards the soul, when that kind of thing in us which mirrors the images of thought and intellect is undisturbed, we see them and know them in a way parallel to sense-perception, along with the prior knowledge that it is intellect and thought that are active. But when this is broken because the harmony of the body is upset, thought and intellect operate without an image, and then intellectual activity takes place without a mind-picture.” (Plotinus, “Enneads”, cca. 270 AD)

"On the assumption that all happens by Cause, it is easy to discover the nearest determinants of any particular act or state to trace it plainly to them." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"[...] so external sensation is the image of this perception of the soul, which is in its essence truer and is a contemplation of forms alone without being affected. From these forms, from which the soul alone receives its lordship over the living being, come reasonings, and opinions and noetic acts; and this is precisely where ‘we’ are." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"The noetic act is without parts and has not, so to speak, come out into the open, but remains unobserved within, but the verbal expression unfolds its content and brings it out of the noetic act into the image making power, and so shows the noetic act as if in a mirror, and this is how there is conscious apprehension and persistence and memory of it." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer." (Plotinus, "Enneads", cca. 270 AD)

"Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself." (Plotinus)

"Knowledge has three degrees - opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition." (Plotinus)

"We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing […] a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use." (Plotinus)