Innerpattern > Innerpattern's Quotes

“A falcon hovers at the edge of the sky.
Two gulls drift slowly up the river.

Vulnerable while they ride the wind,
they coast and glide with ease.

Dew is heavy on the grass below,
the spider's web is ready.

Heaven's ways include the human:
among a thousand sorrows, I stand alone.”
― Tu Fu

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”
― Matsuo Bashō

“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
― Lao Tse

“At every moment where language can't go, that's your mind.”
― Bodhidharma

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
― Immanuel Kant

“And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“It takes more than language to know what language can know.”
― Barry Allen

“Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“Man's character is his fate.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments