Tag: philosophy

But time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable....

What great philosophers do for us is not to hand out such an all-purpose system. It is to light up and clarify some special aspect of life, to supply conceptual tools which will do a certain necessary kind of work. Wide...

My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it’s not really forgiveness. It’s Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you’re trying to live up to but you’re...

To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I,...

Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the...

Apocalypse is a frame of mind.” [Nicodemus] said then. “A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope....

The perfect is the enemy of the good....

Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it....

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring...

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, itturns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits theground it gets all mushed up. So it’s only absolutely perfect when it’s falling through...