The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Georg C. LichtenbergRead
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
Interpretation
This quote contrasts human rationality with divine passion, suggesting that reason defines humanity while passion connects us to the divine.
Georg C. Lichtenberg's quote highlights the dual nature of existence, where human beings are fundamentally rational creatures, represented by reason, while God is represented through the intense emotions and passions that drive human experience. This suggests that our ability to think and reason is what makes us inherently human, while our passions and emotional depth connect us to something greater than ourselves, possibly the divine or a higher meaning in life.
In practice
During a philosophy seminar discussing human nature.
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.
Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.
Christianity is not some ideal toward which we ought always to strive even though the ideal is out of reach. Christianity is not a series of slogans that sum up our beliefs.
Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.
In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.
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