“A man must first despise himself, and then others will despise him.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book IV A
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Philosophy Quotes
205 quotes on philosophy and the big questions — from the classics to the everyday.
“He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature. Knowing his nature, he knows Heaven.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VII A
“The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book IV B, c. 4th century BCE
“You are not the oil, you are not the air, merely the point of combustion between them.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Crack-Up, 1936
“Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.”
Benjamin Disraeli · Vivian Grey, 1826
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
Plutarch · Moralia, c. 100 AD
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
William Shakespeare · Julius Caesar, c. 1599
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard · The Writing Life, 1989
“Confine yourself to the present.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, Book 8
“The man who laughs at another's misfortune has simply decided his own comfort matters more than someone else's pain. That is the whole of his character.”
Original
“Every city is a thousand private stories happening simultaneously, and you are one of them, no more or less.”
Original
“The person the world ignores is usually the one paying the closest attention to it.”
Original
“Your softness and your firmness are the same thing. Both are you.”
Original
“A woman who knows her own mind is never really alone in a room.”
Original
“Anger is just fear with better posture. It fools other people, but it rarely fools you.”
Original
“A lie told to protect your comfort is still a crack in the foundation of who you are.”
Original
“Silence before a note is not empty. It is the whole argument, waiting to be made.”
Original
