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Amiel, H.
Aurelius, M.
Bacon, F.
Baudelaire, C.
Beaumarchais, P.
Bellow, S.
Bierce, A.
Butler, S.
Chesterton, G.
Descartes, R.
Dostoievski, F.
Einstein, A.
Emerson, R.
Epictetus, .
Espinoza, B.
Faulkner, W.
Fénelon, F.
Franklin, B.
Goethe, J.
Holmes, O.
Hume, D.
Huxley, A.
Lao-Tze, .
Le Bon, G.
Leopardi, G.
Lichtenberg, G.
Machiavelli, N.
Mill, S.
Montaigne, M.
Nietzsche, F.
Pascal, B.
Pasternak, B.
Proust, M.
Rousseau, J.
Russell, B.
Sartre, J.
Schopenhauer, A.
Schweitzer, A.
Seneca, L.
Spencer, H.
Thoreau, H.
Twain, M.
Vinci, L.
Wilde, O.
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Thoughts and Reflections
Thoughts and Reflections of great authors, through excerpts taken from their books. By divulging these excerpts, they serve the purpose of providing good reflecions, and indirectly to increase the interest by these authors and respective works.
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| The Most Recent
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Vanity as a Submission and Self-Suppression
 It may be asked, how is one to account for such vanity? How does it arise, in spite of complete insignificance, in pitiful creatures who are forced by their social position to know their place? Perhaps, in some of these degraded victims of fate, your fools and buffoons, vanity far from being dispelled by humiliation is even aggravated by that very humiliation, by being a fool and buffoon, by eating the bread of dependence and being for ever forced to submission and self-suppression. Who knows, maybe, this ugly exaggerated vanity is only a false fundamentally depraved sense of personal dignity, first outraged, perhaps, in childhood by oppression, poverty, filth, spat upon, perhaps, in the person of the future outcast's parents before his eyes.
Fiodor Dostoievski, in 'The Friend of the Family'
Data: 2009/07/09 14:00
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Things Said About Us in Our Absence
 We are seldom right to consider ourselves offended by things said about us in our absence or with no intention that they should come to our ears. Because if we try to remember and examine carefully our own habits, we find we have no friend so dear, and hold no one in such veneration, that it would not greatly displease them to hear many of the words and the conversations which come from our mouths about them in their absence. On the one hand our amour propre is so excessively sensitive, and so captious, that it is almost impossible than one word said about us in our absence, if it is faithfully reported to us, should not seem to us unworthy ou hardly worthy of us, and not sting us. On the other hand it is hard to exaggerate how contrary our practice is to the precept not to do unto others what we would not want them to do unto us, and how much freedom we allow ourselves in speaking about other people.
Giacomo Leopardi, in 'Thoughts'
Data: 2009/07/08 14:00
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All Love Is Connected With Presence
 All love is connected with presence; what is agreeable to us by its presence always shows itself to us when it is absent and constantly makes us want its renewed presence, and, when this wish is granted, is accompanied by lively delight; when this joy persists we are filled by an ever-equal happiness - this is what we really love, and this means that we can love everything that can enter our presence; indeed, to formulate an ultimate statement: love of the divinity always strives to make what is highest present to us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in "Maxims and Thoughts"
Data: 2009/07/07 13:00
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Judgements are Always Influenced
 How difficult it is to submit anything to the judgement of another, without prejudicing his judgement by the manner in which we submit it! If we say, «I think it beautiful», «I think it obscure», or the like, we either entice the imagination into that view, or irritate it to the contrary. It is better to say nothing; and then the other judges according to what really is, that is to say, according as it then is and according as the other circumstances, not of the way we have placed it. But we at least shall have added nothing, unless it be that silence also produces an effect, according to the turn and the interpretation which the other will be disposed to give it, or as he will guess it from gestures or countenance, or from the tone of the voice, if he is a physiognomist. So difficult is it not to upset a judgement from its natural place, or, rather, so rarely is it firm and stable!
Blaise Pascal, in 'Pensees'
Data: 2009/06/29 14:20
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Personal Merit Has to Beg Pardon in Society
 What offends a great intellect in society is the equality of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which everyone enjoys; while at the same time, inequality of capacity means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called «good society» recognizes every kind of claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dullness; whilst personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its very existence, without any desire to do so.
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Data: 2009/06/25 14:20
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The Price of Independence
 It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men!
Friedrich Nietzsche, in 'Beyond Good and Evil'
Data: 2009/06/24 14:31
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To Love Others Like Yourself
The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the great thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a bilion times - but it has not formed part of our livres! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only every one wants it, it can all be arranged at once.
Fiodor Dostoievski, in 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man'
Data: 2009/06/23 14:30
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