No consensus of men can make an error erroneous. We can only find or commit an error, not create it. When we commit an error, we say what was an error already.
Josiah RoyceRead
That this individual life of all of us is not something limited in its temporal expression to the life that now we experience, follows from the very fact that here nothing final or individual is found expressed.
Interpretation
Our individual lives extend beyond our current experiences and are interconnected with a larger existence.
Josiah Royce's quote suggests that the significance of individual life transcends mere temporal existence. It implies that the essence of our lives is not limited to the time we spend on earth, as it is part of a broader, interconnected reality which remains unexpressed in singular experiences. This reflection encourages us to see our lives as part of a greater whole, contributing to an ongoing narrative rather than isolated events.
In practice
In a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of their future beyond immediate achievements.
No consensus of men can make an error erroneous. We can only find or commit an error, not create it. When we commit an error, we say what was an error already.
A crowd, whether it be a dangerous mob, or an amiably joyous gathering at a picnic is not a community. It has a mind, but no institutions, no organizations, no coherent unity, no history, no traditions.
We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought.
Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself.
God loves the saints as the purchase of his Son's blood. They cost him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was willing to expend his Son's blood to gain them, will not deny his power to keep them.
Man is a degeneration of what he was.
The descent to the infernal regions is easy enough, but to retrace one's steps, and reach the air above, there's the rub.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.
Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.
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