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Quotes about philosophy

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Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XIIn context
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Truth & Lies
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter LXXIn context
- Nature
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship.
James Joyce1882–1941Ulysses (1922), Part II, Episode 9In context
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Kahlil Gibran1883–1931The Prophet (1923), On Self-KnowledgeIn context
To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.
Alexandre Dumas1802–1870The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), Volume One, Chapter 17In context
- Education
- Knowledge
Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin.
Alexandre Dumas1802–1870The Three Musketeers (1844), Chapter XLVIIIIn context
- Life & Death
As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
Hermann Hesse1877–1962Steppenwolf (1927), Treatise on the SteppenwolfIn context
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598), Act V, Scene I, spoken by LeonatoIn context
- Health
If therefore it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.
Marcus Aurelius121–180Meditations (c. 170–180), The Eighth BookIn context
- Emotion
- Thinking
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,⁠—nor the human race, as I believe
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (c. 375 BC), Book VIn context
- Government
- Leadership
There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (c. 375 BC), Book XIn context
- Poetry
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Walden (1854), Economy (1 of 3)In context
- Wisdom
Leasure is the mother of Philosophy; and Common-wealth, the mother of Peace, and Leasure
Thomas Hobbes1588–1679Leviathan (1651), Part IV: Of the Kingdome of Darknesse, Chapter XLVIIn context
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens1879–1955The Snow Man (1921)In context
- Nature