The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.
F. H. BradleyRead
The cost of a thing is what I call life which has to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Interpretation
The value of something is measured by the life energy one must spend to obtain it.
In this quote, F. H. Bradley emphasizes that every possession or experience has a price, not merely in monetary terms but in the life and effort one must invest to attain it. This perspective highlights the intrinsic value of time and energy, suggesting that our choices reflect how we allocate our most precious resourceβour lives.
In practice
In a motivational speech about work-life balance.
The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.
Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.
They can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.
The promise of the American Dream requires that we are all provided an equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to our nation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.