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
One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote discusses the paradox of suicide and the state of one's mental faculties when considering it.
F. H. Bradley's quote reflects the complexity surrounding the topic of suicide, suggesting that the act of ending one's life is intrinsically linked to one's mental state. It implies that those contemplating such a choice may not be in a rational frame of mind, thus highlighting the tragic irony that the ability to think through the consequences is often lost when one approaches a state of despair.
Themes
SuicideMental HealthDespairIronyPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a support group discussing mental health, this quote could be used to highlight the need for compassionate intervention.
More from F. H. Bradley
All quotes →Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.
F. H. BradleyRead
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
F. H. BradleyRead
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
F. H. BradleyRead
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
F. H. BradleyRead
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.
F. H. BradleyRead
Similar quotes
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.
Ralph NaderRead
War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. . . . It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forebearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that-being what it is-it falls so short of in fact and in deed.
Clare Boothe LuceRead
The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.
John SteinbeckRead
What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?
Shimon PeresRead
We are in front of a global scandal of around one billion - one billion people who still suffer from hunger today. We cannot look the other way and pretend this does not exist. The food available in the world is enough to feed everyone.
Pope FrancisRead