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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4h

“To divine in advance how ordinary people will act one has to assume that, when they are in an unpleasant situation, they always seek to get out of it with the smallest expenditure of intelligence.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 18h

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

— John Dewey, Democracy and Education

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 21h

“I am at this instant in a white void awaiting the next instant. Measuring time is just a working hypothesis. But whatever exists is perishable and this forces us to measure immutable and permanent time. It never began and never will end. Never.”

— Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

“An insult – it is a purification; it is the most pungent and painful consciousness! ... And indeed, now I am posing myself one idle question: what is better – cheap happiness or sublime suffering? Well, which is better?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

187. Productivity And Compassion

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

“My attachment to my beliefs about productivity causes me to treat myself like a machine that must complete a certain amount of work over a certain amount of time. As a result, I withhold compassion from myself, my needs go unmet, and I suffer.”

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suliqyre.com/posts/produc...

When I feel I’m not making enough progress, I can easily become frustrated. This is especially true when the source of the delay is my own carelessness. I’ve been doing something other than what I sho...

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

Why should the opinions of others be sources of pleasure and pain to us in the first place? We live in the eyes of others because we must live in our own.”

— Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

“People who care only for what they get and not at all for what they are are surely uncommon. Even the worst of us seem to want others to like and admire us (if not morally then in other ways) and wither in the face of contempt. ...

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The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though...

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

“There must certainly be a pleasure in criticizing everything, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties… there is a pleasure in having no pleasure.”

— Voltaire, Candide

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

“The writer is the exemplary sufferer because he has found both the deepest level of suffering and also a professional means to sublimate his suffering. As a man, he suffers; as a writer, he transforms his suffering into art.

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

We ought not to be too anxious respecting the opinion of others.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft, “Letter to Mary Hays (1797)”

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

“Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by the force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure.

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 2d

“The certainty of words does not seem to fit with the uncertainty of ourselves... The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It's a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry.”

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suliqyre.com/posts/words-...

186. Words Say Too Much

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

“Who can tell the anguish of the man who sided with the creature against the creator and who, losing the idea of his own innocence, and that of others, judges the creature, and himself, to be as criminal as the creator.”

— Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

“[For the unhappiest man], what he hopes for lies behind him, and what he remembers lies before him.”

— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

“Most people are, like Leibniz's possible worlds, only equally rightful pretenders to existence. Few exist.”

— Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

“Words Say Too Much”, etc. (186-190)

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 3d

“Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we're describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.”

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suliqyre.substack.com/p/words-say-...

The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It's a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry.

suliqyre.substack.com

You have a desire you cannot completely satisfy. You might be able to partly fulfill it, either now or in the future, but it will continue to exist because it is endless. You want more and more of the...

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 3d

“Everyone knows that there are forms of cruelty which can injure a man's life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul.”

— Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 3d

“No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.”

— Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 3d

“The Zohar says that “in any word shine a thousand lights” (3.202a). The unlimitedness of the sense of a text is due to the free combinations of its signifiers, which in that text are linked together as they are only accidentally but which could be combined differently.”

— Umberto Eco

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

“Words are like wind and waves; actions are a matter of gain and loss. Wind and waves are easily moved; questions of gain and loss easily lead to danger.”

— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 4)

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 4d

“This is part of the tragedy of being human. The temporary nature of our existence means we are unable to achieve all of the things we want to achieve. There will always be something more we must leave undone. There will always be something we want that we will never have.”

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185. Endless Desire

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.”

— John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

“Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”

— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius