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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 11h

“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 · 14h

“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 · 17h

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 · 17h

“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 · 19h

“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

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...

suliqyre.com

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 22h

“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 · 1d

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

— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

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

— Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

“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.”

Read more:
suliqyre.substack.com/p/words-say-...

“Words Say Too Much”, etc. (186-190)

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

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 1d

“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 · 2d

“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 · 2d

“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 · 2d

“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 · 2d

“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

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...

suliqyre.com

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 2d

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 · 2d

“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 · 3d

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

— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 3d

“A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible. Which is to say, the universe.

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 3d

“Truth is given, not for deposit in some safe place, but for realization in the fullness of life, and for development.”

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Christian Existentialism

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 3d

“To claim that chaos is imminent because change is needed is a great exaggeration. Our normative agreements are all interconnected, but this is not a point of weakness, it is one of strength.”

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suliqyre.com/posts/rules-...

184. Rules And Rebellions

When there is a rule that feels wrong or harmful, we might rebel against it. A tension has formed between us and the rule. The rule says we ought to do something, but we can see it’s better to act in ...

suliqyre.com

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 3d

“Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.”

— Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

“The wise person esteems everyone, for he recognizes the good in each, and he realizes how hard it is to do things well.”

— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 4d

“The old slogan ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’ that still corresponded to the surrealist phase of this estheticization of life, is obsolete.

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Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 4d

“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it’s hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 8d

“Sometimes it feels like there is no choice, or like the choice has already been made for me. I have to remind myself this is never true. There are always options. There is always a choice.”

Read more:
suliqyre.substack.com/p/there-is-a...

“There Is Always A Choice”, etc. (181-185)

Sometimes it feels like there is no choice, or like the choice has already been made for me. I have to remind myself this is never true.

suliqyre.substack.com

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