Quote archive

Philosophy quotes — page 20

Quotations 457–480 of 692.

  1. Nothing under Heaven is softer than water, yet nothing attacks the hard and strong more effectively.
  2. Bent, then whole; crooked, then straight; hollow, then full; worn, then new.
  3. You cannot speak of the ocean to a frog in a well — it is confined by its space.
  4. The fish trap exists for the fish; once you have the fish, you forget the trap.
  5. A dike a thousand li long can collapse from an ant hole.
  6. Know the other and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will not be in peril.
  7. Before you looked at this flower, it and your mind alike were still; when you come to look, its colors suddenly become clear.
  8. The great method of ordering the world lies in discerning the times and gauging the situation.
  9. Conquer anger by non-anger; conquer evil by good.
  10. One should lift oneself by oneself; one should not degrade oneself.
  11. To carry the self forward and practice the myriad things is delusion; for the myriad things to come forth and practice the self is enlightenment.
  12. Who would have thought that self-nature is originally pure; who would have thought that self-nature is originally neither born nor destroyed.
  13. Pure experience is identical with direct experience.
  14. The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.
  15. What you have inherited from your fathers, earn it in order to possess it.
  16. It is the task of beauty to lead the sensuous human being to the rational human being.
  17. One cannot say it too often: nothing is more fruitful in wonders than the art of being free.
  18. Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.
  19. The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.
  20. Prayer consists of attention.
  21. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love… can once again be made central.
  22. Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a standing in, not a falling for.
  23. By “renewing the people” we do not mean abandoning all that is old to follow others. Renewal has two senses: to refine what we already have, and to supply what we lack.
  24. Tolerance is the foundation of all freedom; without tolerance, there is no freedom.