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PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES

Philosophical quotes offer condensed insights into humanity’s deepest questions. They invite reflection on how we think, live, and relate to the world around us. The following collection serves as a doorway to contemplation, curiosity, and quiet intellectual challenge.   ◀ Back
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Make life easier by living in the present and believing in the future.
- Jonas Eriksson
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Flexibility makes buildings to be stronger, imagine what it can do to your soul.
- Carlos Barrios
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
These wisest men of all ages should be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? Tottery? Decadent? Late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a Raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols
Topic: Philosophical
We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people
- Sara Shepard
Ruthless
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
- Frédéric Gros
A Philosophy of Walking
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon.
- James Thurber
Many Moons
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Never let your uniqueness be compromised
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, "I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them "matter". I feel them changing place. This gives me "motion". Where there is an absence of matter, I call it "void", or "nothing", or "immaterial space". On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.
Topic: Philosophical
MIGHT, something God only has.
- A Gentlemen
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Confessions
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.
- Shashi Tharoor
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
We must think beyond ourselves
- Kevin J. Anderson
A Forest of Stars
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.
- Iain Pears
The Dream of Scipio
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Success
No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?
- Ian Frazier
On the Rez
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The most important thing I gained from my travels was the knowledge that one could achieve anything with determination and an ounce of luck.
- Stefan Waydenfeld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past.
- Aidan Chambers
The Toll Bridge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pay attention to me.
- Sally Quinn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be worse than your dream life.
- Brock Clarke
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The art of leaving things alone. Especially when the seas of public or personal life are stormiest. There are whirlwinds in the affairs of men, tempests of the will, and it makes good sense to retire and wait things out in a safe harbour... Let nature or morality take its course.
- Baltasar Gracián
How to Use Your Enemies
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
On the Samael Qlipha, the magician makes a pact with the dark forces and realizes the invitation of Friedrich Neitzsche to re-evaluate old values. Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Samael is the 'Poison of God.' Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left. The dark side of the astral plane could be compared to a chalice filled with poison or an intoxicating fluid. While Gamaliel is the chalice, Samael is the elixir and the following lower Qlipha, A'arab Zaraq, is where the magician experiences the effect.
- Thomas Karlsson
Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have gradually come to understand what every great philosophy until now has been: the confession of its author and a kind of involuntarily unconscious memoir.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
Topic: Philosophical
Make life easier by living in the present and believing in the future.
- Jonas Eriksson
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Flexibility makes buildings to be stronger, imagine what it can do to your soul.
- Carlos Barrios
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
These wisest men of all ages should be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? Tottery? Decadent? Late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a Raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols
Topic: Philosophical
We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people
- Sara Shepard
Ruthless
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
- Frédéric Gros
A Philosophy of Walking
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon.
- James Thurber
Many Moons
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Never let your uniqueness be compromised
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, "I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them "matter". I feel them changing place. This gives me "motion". Where there is an absence of matter, I call it "void", or "nothing", or "immaterial space". On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.
Topic: Philosophical
MIGHT, something God only has.
- A Gentlemen
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Confessions
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.
- Shashi Tharoor
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
We must think beyond ourselves
- Kevin J. Anderson
A Forest of Stars
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.
- Iain Pears
The Dream of Scipio
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Success
No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?
- Ian Frazier
On the Rez
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The most important thing I gained from my travels was the knowledge that one could achieve anything with determination and an ounce of luck.
- Stefan Waydenfeld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past.
- Aidan Chambers
The Toll Bridge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pay attention to me.
- Sally Quinn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be worse than your dream life.
- Brock Clarke
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The art of leaving things alone. Especially when the seas of public or personal life are stormiest. There are whirlwinds in the affairs of men, tempests of the will, and it makes good sense to retire and wait things out in a safe harbour... Let nature or morality take its course.
- Baltasar Gracián
How to Use Your Enemies
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
On the Samael Qlipha, the magician makes a pact with the dark forces and realizes the invitation of Friedrich Neitzsche to re-evaluate old values. Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Samael is the 'Poison of God.' Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left. The dark side of the astral plane could be compared to a chalice filled with poison or an intoxicating fluid. While Gamaliel is the chalice, Samael is the elixir and the following lower Qlipha, A'arab Zaraq, is where the magician experiences the effect.
- Thomas Karlsson
Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have gradually come to understand what every great philosophy until now has been: the confession of its author and a kind of involuntarily unconscious memoir.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
Topic: Philosophical
Make life easier by living in the present and believing in the future.
- Jonas Eriksson
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Flexibility makes buildings to be stronger, imagine what it can do to your soul.
- Carlos Barrios
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
These wisest men of all ages should be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? Tottery? Decadent? Late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a Raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols
Topic: Philosophical
We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people
- Sara Shepard
Ruthless
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
- Frédéric Gros
A Philosophy of Walking
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon.
- James Thurber
Many Moons
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Never let your uniqueness be compromised
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, "I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them "matter". I feel them changing place. This gives me "motion". Where there is an absence of matter, I call it "void", or "nothing", or "immaterial space". On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.
Topic: Philosophical
MIGHT, something God only has.
- A Gentlemen
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Confessions
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.
- Shashi Tharoor
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
We must think beyond ourselves
- Kevin J. Anderson
A Forest of Stars
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.
- Iain Pears
The Dream of Scipio
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical, Success
No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?
- Ian Frazier
On the Rez
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The most important thing I gained from my travels was the knowledge that one could achieve anything with determination and an ounce of luck.
- Stefan Waydenfeld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past.
- Aidan Chambers
The Toll Bridge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Pay attention to me.
- Sally Quinn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be worse than your dream life.
- Brock Clarke
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The art of leaving things alone. Especially when the seas of public or personal life are stormiest. There are whirlwinds in the affairs of men, tempests of the will, and it makes good sense to retire and wait things out in a safe harbour... Let nature or morality take its course.
- Baltasar Gracián
How to Use Your Enemies
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
On the Samael Qlipha, the magician makes a pact with the dark forces and realizes the invitation of Friedrich Neitzsche to re-evaluate old values. Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Samael is the 'Poison of God.' Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left. The dark side of the astral plane could be compared to a chalice filled with poison or an intoxicating fluid. While Gamaliel is the chalice, Samael is the elixir and the following lower Qlipha, A'arab Zaraq, is where the magician experiences the effect.
- Thomas Karlsson
Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have gradually come to understand what every great philosophy until now has been: the confession of its author and a kind of involuntarily unconscious memoir.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
Topic: Philosophical
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8
9
10
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