Metaphysics Quotes - Page 9

• There's a power that brings us to things, and there's a power that lets us move away from things, from people, places, experiences. And what you learn to do in metaphysics is accept.

  Frederick Lenz

  Moving, Buddhism, People

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• That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Wall, Mirrors, Diversity

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• I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  People

  Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1974). “Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays”, p.140, Oxford University Press

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• All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Knowledge

  Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1854). “De Quincey's Writings: Essays on philosophical writers and other men of letters. 1854-60. [v. 14 stereotyped”, p.103

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• One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.

  James Russell Lowell

  Temptation, Philosopher

  James Russell Lowell (1864). “Fireside Travels”, p.119

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• Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

  Karl Kraus

  Newspapers, Fortune, Fortune Teller

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• The bible is a source of great inspiration to me. It is a textbook of metaphysics. Within the bible are keys to personal growth, and lessons in personal actualization. The bible is a spiritual masterpiece.

  John Fante

  Spiritual, Inspiration, Keys

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• When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

  Voltaire

  Philosophy, Men, Speak

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• Now these two questions Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

  Pierre Duhem

  Reality, Two, Theoretical Physics

  "The aim and structure of physical theory". Book by Pierre Duhem, translated by Philip P. Wiener, p. 10, 1991.

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• To bracket form and finality out of one's investigations as far as reason allows is a matter of method, but to deny their reality altogether is a matter of metaphysics.

  David Bentley

  Reality, Matter, Reason

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• Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics - religion, death, existentialism - to the screen. ... But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He's like a miner digging in search of purity.

  Bertrand Tavernier

  Men, Digging, Way

  "Ingmar Bergman, Master Filmmaker, Dies at 89" by Mervyn Rothstein, www.nytimes.com. July 30, 2007.

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• Tantra is spiritual, not religious. It deals with the spirit. Religion is just an applied body of doctrines that's believed or not believed by one or more individuals. Spirituality is the science of metaphysics.

  Frederick Lenz

  Spiritual, Religious, Philosophy

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• poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion.

  Annie Dillard

  Mixtures, Able, Journalism

  Annie Dillard (1983). “Living by Fiction”, New York : Harper & Row

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• Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Believe, Soul, Doubt

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• In the case of Anathem, most of the research had to do with philosophy and metaphysics. Reading this sort of thing has never been my strong suit, so I actually had to be somewhat more "organized and results-driven" than is my habit. I just made up my mind that I was going to have to read some of these philosophy tomes, and I forced myself to read something like 10 pages a day until I had bashed my way through them.

  Neal Stephenson

  Strong, Philosophy, Reading

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Together, Tools, Use

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.231

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• Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mind, Rise Above

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.89, CUP Archive

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• Unfortunately, half the boats were lost in a great storm at sea, and many members of the six boats that did make it to their destinations safely, were later killed by the very native people to whom they sought to transmit their knowledge of the Atlantean sciences, arts and metaphysics.

  Frederick Lenz

  Art, Sea, People

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Religion, Physics

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• The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Plato, History, Secret

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.449

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• Questions are not happenstance thoughts nor are questions common problems of today which one picks up from hearsay and booklearning and decks out with a gesture of profundity questions grow out of confrontation with the subject matter and the subject matter is there only where eyes are, it is in this manner that questions will be posed and all the more considering that questions that have today fallen out of fashion in the great industry of problems. One stands up for nothing more than the normal running of the industry. Philosophy interprets its corruption as the resurrection of metaphysics.

  Martin Heidegger

  Running, Fashion, Philosophy

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• Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Play, Library

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• There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.

  George Steiner

  Men, Cities, Would Be

  George Steiner (1991). “Real Presences”, p.89, University of Chicago Press

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• I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Thinking, Everyday, Forget

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• The truth of the thoughts that are here set forth seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Believe, Essentials, Finals

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1961). “Tractatus logico-philosophicus: The German text Logisch-philosophische abhandlung”

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