1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5355
5356
5357
5358
5359
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a4b082f | Spinoza follows Maimonides in rejecting the ordinary meanings which attach to words, and in asking his readers to attend, not to language, but to the 'ideas' which he is attempting to convey by means of it. Common usage is governed by the imagination, which associates words, not with clear and distinct ideas, but with the confused conceptions of experience. In the language of imagination nothing can be truly described, and nothing is more m.. | spinoza word | Roger Scruton | |
| 7634c77 | Nonsemes and mathemes stand next to each other in detached and mutually irrelevant jumbles. They lack the crucial valency that ties sentence to sentence in a truth-directed argument or formula to formula in a valid proof, and they can accumulate forever without getting to the point of saying or revealing what they mean. | Roger Scruton | ||
| a149667 | We value modesty partly because we value desire, and look with suspicion on those habits which untie the knot of individual attachment. Havelock Ellis put the point tendentiously, but (as I shall argue) correctly, when he wrote: 'In the art of love...[modesty] is more than a grace; it must always be fundamental. Modesty is not indeed the last word of love, but it is the necessary foundation for all love's exquisite audacities, the foundati.. | Roger Scruton | ||
| 3af00b8 | The greatest modern philosopher was moved by nothing more than by duty. His life, in consequence, was unremarkable. | Roger Scruton | ||
| 82f0088 | The very same 'mystery' that veils the human person from the neurophysiologist veils human history from the Marxian determinist and human morality from the sociobiologist. | Roger Scruton | ||
| 34592e3 | The picture of a universe of infinitely many wholly unrelated substances is at least as hard to understand as the monism of Spinoza, and far less easy to reconcile with appearances. | monism spinoza | Roger Scruton | |
| 2bf83ee | virtue is indeed teachable, | Anthony Kenny | ||
| 34b6c33 | In exile in Lampsacus, Anaxagoras made his final benefaction to humanity: the invention of the school holiday. | Anthony Kenny | ||
| ee7cece | when the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 4bd1315 | Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| ad96e9d | Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| a633837 | Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us). | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 62a0c1c | If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with you.. | jesus jesus-christ jesus-shock religion-and-philoshophy | Peter Kreeft | |
| 4a4544c | God loves us more than we love Him. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 727d664 | It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| d84b19a | Third, it can mean deep, wondering reverence, or "awe" at something immeasurably superior. This is an emotion that is much rarer today than ever before in the history of the world, probably because modern life is so full of scientific knowledge and technological power over nature that we live in a dream of arrogant cleverness and a cocoon of predictable comforts." | Peter Kreeft | ||
| b398692 | Live a life of love, especially the love of God, and observe the joy of it. Live a life of lovelessness and observe the joylessness of it. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 22a0fc9 | F]or a thing to be evil, one single defect suffices, whereas for it to be good . . . it is not enough for it to be good in one point only, it must be good in every respect. . . . | Peter Kreeft | ||
| c7817db | He offers total mercy and forgiveness to all who will accept it by trusting Him and repenting of their sins, but He does not, and cannot, give forgiveness to those who will not receive His gift. Gifts are freely given and freely received. Heaven cannot be forced on a creature with free will. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| b35f86b | When you're in a burning building looking out of the twentieth story window down to the street and all you see is clouds of billowing smoke, you have to choose to believe the firemen below who tell you they have a safety net and it's safe to jump. When the clouds of smoke disappear, you don't have to believe any more: you see it. In this world, it's a leap in the dark; in the next world, it's a leap in the light. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| e711cd8 | There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 95c03b3 | Honesty is a moral virtue, a matter of the will. Honesty means willing the truth with the whole of your heart. This demands sacrifice. We have little hope of attaining honesty unless we realize how demanding it is. It demands sacrifice of self-will, self-image, the desire to win, and the comfort of being right. The "honesty" often praised today is usually only emotional honesty with others, not intellectual honesty with one's self; only "le.. | morality philosophy truth | Peter Kreeft | |
| d3a6bc2 | No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| b1f10ce | To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our .. | christian faith jesus power-of-his-name prayer | Peter Kreeft | |
| d3346bf | High and holy ambition--to be a saint--is not opposed to holy humility--total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility. | grace humilty prayer trust-in-god | Peter Kreeft | |
| 61aaeee | The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times. | god prayer | Peter Kreeft | |
| 5e4ec83 | It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, "Like a human body.")" | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 1e59e01 | The literary establishment in England was stunned, shocked, and scandalized by an event of millennial significance when a major bookstore chain innocently polled English-speaking readers, asking them to choose the greatest book of the twentieth century. By a wide margin The Lord of the Rings won. Three times the poll was broadened: to a worldwide readership, into cyberspace via Amazon.com, and even to "the greatest book of the millennium". .. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 1d8c19a | Praying anywhere" can easily become "praying nowhere", just as "praying anytime" can easily become "praying at no time". Everything in general becomes nothing in particular"." | particular prayer | Peter Kreeft | |
| a00b99e | There is no such thing as an involuntary sin. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 377565c | Socrates: "Know thyself." For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints." | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 7433a71 | So nothing can be ours by right, by nature, or by necessity. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. This is the thing even God cannot do for me. It really is my choice. God can love, but He cannot compel my free love. If it is compelled, it is not free. If it is free, it is not compelled. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 2f01a73 | Truth is unchanging. The principles of morality are unchanging. The human essence is unchanging. Therefore there is no hope of a New Man, Heaven on Earth, Babel Rebuilt, a Brave New World, or Superman. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 1ef1f20 | For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| c8ec114 | we are fallen fools, most of our philosophy is not "the proper use of human reason" but the improper use of human reason." | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 40b4bda | The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 5aa2ec5 | Sociologists and anthropologists tell us that religion has three dimensions: creed, code, and cult; or words, works, and worship; or theology, morality, and liturgy. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| d5b135f | life is a quest for love and a quest for god, and there is no car or plane for this trip. it is an old-fashioned quest made on our own two feet. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| ef0e5c7 | Only Judaism and Christianity are religions of public record, eyewitnessed facts. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 66e832f | god is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of god. music is a language more profound than words. how often have you heard a great piece of music and felt that? great music does not just make you feel good; great music suggests some profound truth or mysterious meaning that objectively true but not translatable into words. attempts to translate music's meaning into words always fail. it is like trying to.. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 42e2e05 | It's the most essential thing of all just because it's not a matter of how you do it at all, but of whether you do it. Like being born, or cooking: how you do it is less important than whether you do it. You can find thousands of books on prayer that give you methods of praying, hundreds of "hows"; but they do you no good at all unless you actually pray. Otherwise it's like reading a cookbook instead of cooking. You can't eat a cookbook!" | prayer | Peter Kreeft | |
| c64d386 | that the ones who laugh the loudest and the most are usually the shallowest and the most foolish? And that the wisest are usually the gravest? Perhaps the wise are grave because they remember the grave. | Peter Kreeft | ||
| 6a8e26f | If we seek the truth without realizing how far we are from it, we will be dogmatists. If we realize how far we are from the truth but do not seek it, we will be skeptics. If we both seek the truth and realize how far we are from it, we will be wise. | dogmatism skepticism truth wisdom | Peter Kreeft | |
| 8d107f6 | The root of most atheism i not argument but attitude, not itellection but feeling, not the love of truth but the fear of truth. | Peter Kreeft |