Peter > Peter's Quotes

“My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.”
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The idealization of the sufferer is carried still further in the “Georgias”, in which the thesis is maintained, that “to suffer is better than to do evil;”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”
― Plato, Apology

“For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them. If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Before he was condemned they had often held discussions, in which they agreed that no man should either do evil, or return evil for evil, or betray the right.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“SOCRATES: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger; and therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or shall not do as you say.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. And I think that you are very wise in not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal, is really limited to his own generation:—so long as his friends or his disciples are alive, so long as his books continue to be read, so long as his political or military successes fill a page in the history of his country. The praises which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly last longer than the flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the 'immortelles' which are laid upon his tomb.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the human soul or in the order of nature, there is God.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“But the deficiency⁠—call it wrathlessness or what you will⁠—is censured. Those who are not angered by what ought to anger them seem to be foolish, and so do those who are not angry as and when and with whom they ought to be; for such a man seems to feel nothing and to be pained by nothing, and, as he is never angered, to lack spirit to defend himself. But to suffer one’s self to be insulted, or to look quietly on while one’s friends are being insulted, shows a slavish nature.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“a right conclusion as to what is to be done may be arrived at in a wrong way or upon wrong grounds⁠—”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day And make me travel forth without my cloak, To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way, Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? ’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace. Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief; Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss. The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief To him that bears the strong offence’s cross. Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.”
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets

“It is the character of the incontinent man to pursue, without being convinced of their goodness, bodily pleasures that exceed the bounds of moderation and are contrary to right reason; but the profligate man is convinced that these things are good because it is his character to pursue them: the former, then, may be easily brought to a better mind, the latter not. For virtue preserves, but vice destroys the principle;”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“When the pleasures they pursue are harmless, we do not blame them (though when they are hurtful the pursuit is bad); for they have no other sources of enjoyment, and the neutral state is painful to many because of their nature:”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“but when the bloom of youth is gone, the friendship sometimes vanishes also; for the one misses the beauty that used to please him, the other misses the attentions. But, on the other hand, they frequently continue friends, i.e. when their intercourse has brought them to care for each other’s characters, and they are similar in character.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“(for we must not treat a man as a friend if he does not wish it: we should consider that we made a mistake at the beginning, and received a benefit from a person from whom we ought not to have accepted it⁠—for he was not a friend and did not act disinterestedly⁠—and so we ought to terminate the relation in the same way as if we had received a service for a stipulated consideration):”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Another difficult question is, whether we should or should not break off friendship with those who have ceased to be what they were.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”
― Samuel Johnson

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
― Samuel Johnson

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
― Samuel Johnson

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
― Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II

“My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. ”
― Samuel Johnson

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
― Samuel Johnson

“Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

“There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.”
― Samuel Johnson

“Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.”
― Samuel Johnson

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia