Happiness Is Living Well, Though Its Nature Is in Dispute
HAPPINESS both the multitude and the refined few call it, and “living well” and “doing well” they conceive to be the same with “being happy
When Death Is the Greatest Danger, One Hopes for Life
When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one’s hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die. – Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death
To Pray Is to Breath – Kierkegaard – Sickness Unto Death
So to pray is to breathe, possibility, is for the self what oxygen is for breathing. But for possibility alone or for necessity alone to supply the conditions for the breathing of prayer is no more possible than it is for a man to breathe oxygen alone or nitrogen alone. For in order to pray […]
Spinoza – Scientifically Consider Human Actions and Desires
Thus the passions … follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes … possess certain properties as worthy of being known … the contemplation in itself affords us delight. I shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions according to the same method, as I employed […]
Men Would Say, Up He Went and Down He Came Without His Eyes
Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death. […]
Plato – The Enlightened Must Descend to the Prisoners
I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not. Plato, Allegory of the Cave