Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
Interpretation
Our thoughts serve as guides to help us achieve our desires.
In this quote, Thomas Hobbes likens thoughts to scouts and spies that explore and navigate towards our desires. It suggests that our mental processes are essential in identifying and pursuing what we truly want, as they assess and determine the best paths to achieve those desires.
In practice
Motivational talks about the power of positive thinking.
Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.
For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.
Scientia potentia est, sed parva; quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.
The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
I could go insane if I obsessed over every little detail of all of my companies. My management philosophy is to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.
I would like the church to be a place where the questions of people are honored rather than a place where we have all the answers. The church has to get out of propaganda. The future will involve us in more interfaith dialogue. ... We cannot say we have the only truth.
The Church is the one institution that exists for those outside it.
If there were no human nature, then there would be nothing for deliberate effort to be applied to. If there were no deliberate effort, then human nature would not be able to beautify itself.
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.
Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs β in time, in space, and in potential β the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.