Citatepedia^®.com

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

quote by Wallace Stevens
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Philosophers Stone

Out on the highways and the by-ways all alone
Im still searching for, searching for my home
Up in the morning, up in the morning out on the road
And my head is aching and my hands are cold
And Im looking for the silver lining, silver lining in the clouds
And Im searching for and
Im searching for the philosophers stone
And its a hard road, its a hard road daddy-o
When my job is turning lead into gold
He was born in the back street, born in the back street jelly roll
Im on the road again and Im searching for
The philosophers stone
Can you hear that engine
Woe can you hear that engine drone
Well Im on the road again and Im searching for
Searching for the philosophers stone
Up in the morning, up in the morning
When the streets are white with snow
Its a hard road, its a hard road daddy-o
Up in the morning, up in the morning
Out on the job
Well youve got me searching for
Searching for, the philosophers stone
Even my best friends, even my best friends they dont know
That my job is turning lead into gold
When you hear that engine, when you hear that engine drone
Im on the road again and Im searching for the philosophers stone
Its a hard road even my best friends they dont know
And Im searching for, searching for the philosophers stone

song performed by Van Morrison
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Complementary viewpoints for friend Chandra

Philosophy and poetry
are not completely different.
Each represents a way to see
What is not always evident.

Philosophers and poets try
to understand the universe.
The answers which they can supply.
Expressed in turgid prose or verse.

Philosophers can be abstruse
and difficult to understand
Because of how they phrase their views.
I don’t dismiss them out of hand.

I much prefer the poets verse
To endless reams of complex prose.
I do not think I am perverse
Simplicity I must suppose.

Is really what appeals to me.
the poets seek to entertain
and yet express with clarity.
Philosophers try to explain.

Their reasoning in great detail.
They just succeed in boring me
Their efforts are to no avail
I will admit quite openly

I simply cannot spare the time
To plough through densely written prose.
But I find poetry sublime
I like the way it ebbs and flows.

The insight that a poet shows
can entertain and educate.
Philosophers try to impose
their views, discouraging debate.

Which does not sit too well with me.
Folks can’t stand being patronised
and will rebel instinctively.
A fact that poets recognise.

They are content to share their thoughts.
With anyone who chooses to
read the verses they have wrought.
Which may express a different view

[...] Read more

poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Book V - Part 07 - Beginnings Of Civilization

Afterwards,
When huts they had procured and pelts and fire,
And when the woman, joined unto the man,
Withdrew with him into one dwelling place,

Were known; and when they saw an offspring born
From out themselves, then first the human race
Began to soften. For 'twas now that fire
Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear,
Under the canopy of the sky, the cold;
And Love reduced their shaggy hardiness;
And children, with the prattle and the kiss,
Soon broke the parents' haughty temper down.
Then, too, did neighbours 'gin to league as friends,
Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,
And urged for children and the womankind
Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures
They stammered hints how meet it was that all
Should have compassion on the weak. And still,
Though concord not in every wise could then
Begotten be, a good, a goodly part
Kept faith inviolate- or else mankind
Long since had been unutterably cut off,
And propagation never could have brought
The species down the ages.
Lest, perchance,
Concerning these affairs thou ponderest
In silent meditation, let me say
'Twas lightning brought primevally to earth
The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread
O'er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus
Even now we see so many objects, touched
By the celestial flames, to flash aglow,
When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat.
Yet also when a many-branched tree,
Beaten by winds, writhes swaying to and fro,
Pressing 'gainst branches of a neighbour tree,
There by the power of mighty rub and rub
Is fire engendered; and at times out-flares
The scorching heat of flame, when boughs do chafe
Against the trunks. And of these causes, either
May well have given to mortal men the fire.
Next, food to cook and soften in the flame
The sun instructed, since so oft they saw
How objects mellowed, when subdued by warmth
And by the raining blows of fiery beams,
Through all the fields.
And more and more each day
Would men more strong in sense, more wise in heart,
Teach them to change their earlier mode and life

[...] Read more

poem by Lucretius
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Concerning the Philosophers Stone. ( alchemical verse .)

.

And also with great diligence,
Thei fonde thilke Experience:
Which cleped is Alconomie,
Whereof the Silver multiplie;
Thei made, and eke the Gold also.
And for to telle howe itt is so:
Of bodies seven in Speciall,
With fowre Spirites joynt withall;
Stant the substance of this matere,
The bodies which I speke of here,
Of the Plannets ben begonne,
The Gold is titled to the Sonne:
The Moone of Silver hath hi part,
And Iron that stonde uppon Mart:
The Leed after Saturne groweth,
And Jupiter the Brasse bestoweth;
The Copper sette is to Venus:
And to his part Mercurius
Hath the Quicksilver, as it falleth,
The which after the Boke it calleth,
Is first of thilke foure named
Of Spirits, which be proclymed,
And the Spirite which is seconde,
In Sal Armoniake is founde:
The third Spirite Sulphur is,
The fourth Sewende after this,
Arcennium by name is hotte
With blowyng, and with fires hote:
In these things which I say,
Thei worchen by divers waye.
For as the Philosopher tolde,
Of Gold and Sylver thei ben holde,
Two Principall extremitees,
To which all other by degrees,
Of the mettals ben accordant,
And so through kinde resemblant:
That what man couth awaie take,
The rust, of which they waxen blake,
And And the favour of the hardnes;
Thei shulden take the likeness;
Of Gold or Silver parfectly,
Bot for to worche it sykerly;
Between the Corps and the Spirite,
Er that the Metall be parfite,
In seven forms itt is sette
Of all, and if one be lette,

[...] Read more

poem by John Gower
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Do Not Give Poetry A Bad Name

The frogs should not have croaked a lot
when everyone is fast asleep
Aristophanes after all is right
These frogs should not live like the Clouds.
On the other hand
THe Philosophers should cling to being
Philosophers
Stay with the embrace of Reason and Not
Embrace the Strong Arms of Emotions
For Emotions belong to nothing but the
Realm of Poetry
aH! Lysistrata shall now wage her own
War against the Men
Claiming as she does
Her sole right to Eroticism

Honestly, i still love to hear the frogs croaking
In the Pond
I for the meantime loves to Keep
The Philosophers dwell in their Own
Cloud Point of view.

If Lysistrata obliges
One night with Her would be enough

After which, I shall work hard to
Give Poetry its Own Right Name.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

quote by George Santayana
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.

quote by Robert Nozick
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

quote by Walter Lippmann
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

quote by Plato
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Child Of The Islands - Winter

I.

ERE the Night cometh! On how many graves
Rests, at this hour, their first cold winter's snow!
Wild o'er the earth the sleety tempest raves;
Silent, our Lost Ones slumber on below;
Never to share again the genial glow
Of Christmas gladness round the circled hearth;
Never returning festivals to know,
Or holidays that mark some loved one's birth,
Or children's joyous songs, and loud delighted mirth.
II.

The frozen tombs are sheeted with one pall,--
One shroud for every churchyard, crisp and bright,--
One foldless mantle, softly covering all
With its unwrinkled width of spotless white.
There, through the grey dim day and starlit night,
It rests, on rich and poor, and young and old,--
Veiling dear eyes,--whose warm homne-cheering light
Our pining hearts can never more behold,--
With an unlifting veil,--that falleth blank and cold.
III.

The Spring shall melt that snow,--but kindly eyes
Return not with the Sun's returning powers,--
Nor to the clay-cold cheek, that buried lies,
The living blooms that flush perennial flowers,--
Nor, with the song-birds, vocal in the bowers,
The sweet familiar tones! In silence drear
We pass our days,--and oft in midnight hours
Call madly on their names who cannot hear,--
Names graven on the tombs of the departed year!
IV.

There lies the tender Mother, in whose heart
So many claimed an interest and a share!
Humbly and piously she did her part
In every task of love and household care:
And mournfully, with sad abstracted air,
The Father-Widower, on his Christmas Eve,
Strokes down his youngest child's long silken hair,
And, as the gathering sobs his bosom heave,
Goes from that orphaned group, unseen to weep and grieve.
V.

Feeling his loneliness the more this day
Because SHE kept it with such gentle joy,
Scarce can he brook to see his children play,
Remembering how her love it did employ

[...] Read more

poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A poem, on the rising glory of America

LEANDER.
No more of Memphis and her mighty kings,
Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies.
Taught golden commerce to unfurl her falls,
And bid fair science smile: No more of Greece
Where learning next her early visit paid,
And spread her glories to illume the world,
No more of Athens, where she flourished,
And saw her sons of mighty genius rise
Smooth flowing Plato, Socrates and him
Who with resistless eloquence reviv'd
The Spir't of Liberty, and shook the thrones
Of Macedon and Persia's haughty king.
No more of Rome enlighten'd by her beams,
Fresh kindling there the fire of eloquence,
And poesy divine; imperial Rome!
Whose wide dominion reach'd o'er half the globe;
Whose eagle flew o'er Ganges to the East,
And in the West far to the British isles.
No more of Britain, and her kings renown'd,
Edward's and Henry's thunderbolts of war;
Her chiefs victorious o'er the Gallic foe;
Illustrious senators, immortal bards,
And wise philosophers, of these no more.
A Theme more new, tho' not less noble claims
Our ev'ry thought on this auspicious day
The rising glory of this western world,
Where now the dawning light of science spreads
Her orient ray, and wakes the muse's song;
Where freedom holds her sacred standard high,
And commerce rolls her golden tides profuse
Of elegance and ev'ry joy of life.

ACASTO.
Since then Leander you attempt a strain
So new, so noble and so full of fame;
And since a friendly concourse centers here
America's own sons, begin O muse!
Now thro' the veil of ancient days review
The period fam'd when first Columbus touch'd
The shore so long unknown, thro' various toils,
Famine and death, the hero made his way,
Thro' oceans bestowing with eternal storms.
But why, thus hap'ly found, should we resume
The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain'd
With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak
Fam'd Amazonia's stream with dead! Or why,
Once more revive the story old in fame,

[...] Read more

poem by Hugh Henry Brackenridge
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A little grammar is most becoming, it becomes a man...

And in case no-one mentioned this to you
on those hot summer afternoons when
you could hear the sound of bat on ball, or
ball on racquet, or foot on football, or
just people enjoying themselves out there
beyond the half-open classroom window –

a little bit of grammar can open your eyes,
open your mind, make you curious…
take for example the word ‘become’..

many centuries ago the ancient Brits
got it from some ‘Germanic’ tribe,
and it meant, to come to a place,
be somewhere, go somewhere…

and later it acquired the sense of something
developing into something else, and
being recognised as that –
‘she’s become a real beauty, hasn’t she? ’

then in the Jane Austeny 18th century years,
they would say ‘what a very becoming
young lady..’ though not to imply she
wasn’t quite a lady yet, oh no…
and the verb had ‘become’
an adjective sometimes (well, OK, a verbal adjective..)

or they’d say ‘How well those clothes become her! ’
meaning, not, she hung them up at night, and
in the morning found herself hanging there inside them…
but meaning decorous, well turned out…

then in the 19th century I guess,
philosophers of the heavy sort (we might assume
they’d reverted to Germanic tones…)
talked about ‘Being and Becoming’,

implying that two things were going on,
a bit like one thing standing still inside
something else which was changing;
or perhaps outside; a bit like God
(whom those philosophers didn’t necessarily
believe in – but it serves…)

God saying ‘I Am - BUT – I am going
to become – Everything! ! … so,
Let There Be Light! ’ and
you know what – there was light…

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Le Mort Joyeux (The Joyful Corpse)

Dans une terre grasse et pleine d'escargots
Je veux creuser moi-même une fosse profonde,
Où je puisse à loisir étaler mes vieux os
Et dormir dans l'oubli comme un requin dans l'onde.

Je hais les testaments et je hais les tombeaux;
Plutôt que d'implorer une larme du monde,
Vivant, j'aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux
À saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.

Ô vers! noirs compagnons sans oreille et sans yeux,
Voyez venir à vous un mort libre et joyeux;
Philosophes viveurs, fils de la pourriture,

À travers ma ruine allez donc sans remords,
Et dites-moi s'il est encor quelque torture
Pour ce vieux corps sans âme et mort parmi les morts!

The Joyful Corpse

In a rich, heavy soil, infested with snails,
I wish to dig my own grave, wide and deep,
Where I can at leisure stretch out my old bones
And sleep in oblivion like a shark in the wave.

I have a hatred for testaments and for tombs;
Rather than implore a tear of the world,
I'd sooner, while alive, invite the crows
To drain the blood from my filthy carcass.

O worms! black companions with neither eyes nor ears,
See a dead man, joyous and free, approaching you;
Wanton philosophers, children of putrescence,

Go through my ruin then, without remorse,
And tell me if there still remains any torture
For this old soulless body, dead among the dead!

— Translated by William Aggeler

The Joyous Dead

In a fat, greasy soil, that's full of snails,
I'll dig a grave deep down, where I may sleep
Spreading my bones at ease, to drowse in deep
Oblivion, as a shark within the wave.

I hate all tombs, and testaments, and wills:
I want no human tears; I'd like it more,

[...] Read more

poem by Charles Baudelaire
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To the spirits of Abn 'Arabi, poet, and Averroes, philosopher

The philosopher asked the poet,

Does what the poets and the mystics
find in their hearts, agree
with what the philosophers have discovered
or reasoned to be true?

The poet answered

Yes, and No

and between the two
is a place, a space, where
the mouth is silent,
the pen hovers poised above the paper,
the eyes sparkle,
the heart leaps and rejoices,
and the mind soars on journeys
beyond anything that was known before
and lives experiences never before experienced;
finds words behind words
that were never spoken before,
sounds behind sounds
never heard before,
a knowledge beyond love,
a love beyond knowledge..

a place where poets and philosophers
meet together in a world of wonder.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Silent Shepherds

What's the best life for a man?
--Never to have been born, sings the choros, and the next best
Is to die young. I saw the Sybil at Cumae
Hung in her cage over the public street--
What do you want, Sybil? I want to die.
Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo.
You have got your wish. But I meant life, not death.
What's the best life for a man? To ride in the wind. To ride
horses and herd cattle
In solitary places above the ocean on the beautiful mountain,
and come home hungry in the evening
And eat and sleep. He will live in the wild wind and quick rain,
he will not ruin his eyes with reading,
Nor think too much.
However, we must have philosophers.
I will have shepherds for my philosophers,
Tall dreary men lying on the hills all night
Watching the stars, let their dogs watch the sheep. And I'll have
lunatics
For my poets, strolling from farm to farm, wild liars distorting
The country news into supernaturalism--
For all men to such minds are devils or gods--and that increases
Man's dignity, man's importance, necessary lies
Best told by fools.
I will have no lawyers nor constables
Each man guard his own goods: there will be manslaughter,
But no more wars, no more mass-sacrifice. Nor I'll have no doctors,
Except old women gathering herbs on the mountain,
Let each have her sack of opium to ease the death-pains.

That would be a good world, free and out-doors.
But the vast hungry spirit of the time
Cries to his chosen that there is nothing good
Except discovery, experiment and experience and discovery: To look
truth in the eyes,
To strip truth naked, let our dogs do our living for us
But man discover.
It is a fine ambition,
But the wrong tools. Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky
the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.

Submitted by Holt

poem by Robinson Jeffers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Hudibras: Part 2 - Canto I

THE ARGUMENT

The Knight by damnable Magician,
Being cast illegally in prison,
Love brings his Action on the Case.
And lays it upon Hudibras.
How he receives the Lady's Visit,
And cunningly solicits his Suite,
Which she defers; yet on Parole
Redeems him from th' inchanted Hole.

But now, t'observe a romantic method,
Let bloody steel a while be sheathed,
And all those harsh and rugged sounds
Of bastinadoes, cuts, and wounds,
Exchang'd to Love's more gentle stile,
To let our reader breathe a while;
In which, that we may be as brief as
Is possible, by way of preface,
Is't not enough to make one strange,
That some men's fancies should ne'er change,
But make all people do and say
The same things still the self-same way
Some writers make all ladies purloin'd,
And knights pursuing like a whirlwind
Others make all their knights, in fits
Of jealousy, to lose their wits;
Till drawing blood o'th' dames, like witches,
Th' are forthwith cur'd of their capriches.
Some always thrive in their amours
By pulling plaisters off their sores;
As cripples do to get an alms,
Just so do they, and win their dames.
Some force whole regions, in despight
O' geography, to change their site;
Make former times shake hands with latter,
And that which was before, come after.
But those that write in rhime, still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For, one for sense, and one for rhime,
I think's sufficient at one time.

But we forget in what sad plight
We whilom left the captiv'd Knight
And pensive Squire, both bruis'd in body,
And conjur'd into safe custody.
Tir'd with dispute and speaking Latin,
As well as basting and bear-baiting,
And desperate of any course,
To free himself by wit or force,

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Butler
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Hudibras: Part 2 - Canto II

THE ARGUMENT

The Knight and Squire, in hot dispute,
Within an ace of falling out,
Are parted with a sudden fright
Of strange alarm, and stranger sight;
With which adventuring to stickle,
They're sent away in nasty pickle.

'Tis strange how some mens' tempers suit
(Like bawd and brandy) with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand last
Only to have them claw'd and canvast;
That keep their consciences in cases,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases,
Ne'er to be us'd, but when they're bent
To play a fit for argument;
Make true and false, unjust and just,
Of no use but to be discust;
Dispute, and set a paradox
Like a straight boot upon the stocks,
And stretch it more unmercifully
Than HELMONT, MONTAIGN, WHITE, or TULLY,
So th' ancient Stoicks, in their porch,
With fierce dispute maintain'd their church;
Beat out their brains in fight and study,
To prove that Virtue is a Body;
That Bonum is an Animal,
Made good with stout polemic brawl;
in which some hundreds on the place
Were slain outright; and many a face
Retrench'd of nose, and eyes, and beard,
To maintain what their sect averr'd;
All which the Knight and Squire, in wrath,
Had like t' have suffered for their faith,
Each striving to make good his own,
As by the sequel shall be shown.

The Sun had long since, in the lap
Of THETIS, taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn,
When HUDIBRAS, whom thoughts and aking,
'Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy eyes,
And from his couch prepar'd to rise,
Resolving to dispatch the deed
He vow'd to do with trusty speed.
But first, with knocking loud, and bawling,
He rouz'd the Squire, in truckle lolling;

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Butler
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Interpretation of Nature and

I.

MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.


II.

Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.

III.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

IV.

Towards the effecting of works, all that man can do is to put together or put asunder natural bodies. The rest is done by nature working within.

V.

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all (as things now are) with slight endeavour and scanty success.

VI.

It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

VII.

The productions of the mind and hand seem very numerous in books and manufactures. But all this variety lies in an exquisite subtlety and derivations from a few things already known; not in the number of axioms.

VIII.

Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

IX.

The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this -- that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.

X.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding; so that all those specious meditations, speculations, and glosses in which men indulge are quite from the purpose, only there is no one by to observe it.

XI.

As the sciences which we now have do not help us in finding out new works, so neither does the logic which we now have help us in finding out new sciences.

XII.

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. So it does more harm than good.

XIII.

[...] Read more

poem by Sir Francis Bacon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Series Of Thoughts Loosely Styled On The Platonic Writings

In the past there were a few
who lived in places,
surrounded by riches,
and many of these royals
thought themselves free.
Yet their every act
was judged by a thousand
cruel, pitiless eyes.

The eyes of a jealous,
ignorant, stagnant society,
that had run its course.
Whose bonds held it fast
on every bordered side.

It was often impossible
or extremely difficult
to be different in
this archaic world.
There are countless
examples of this. Sadly,
some of these forms
still exist among us today.

If you would know truth
you must seek it among
all kinds of men. (People)
For the says of the learned
are like the heavy wines
of Asia Minor,
which cloud the mind
and cause it to dwell
in mists of words
without understanding.

It is normally hard
for the pampered rich
to achieve to greatness
or to perform noble deeds.
For the rich are ensnared
by their possessions.
The care of them
fills their whole mind.
Those who seem first
with men (People)
are often last with God.

For the inward qualities
come first with God,
while the outward signs

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Winning Philosophy

when life handed me
sour lemons
I made lemonade

when life handed me
sour grapes
I made rich red wine

when life was a dangerous
roller coaster
I refused to get on for the ride

when life offered
a shit sandwich
I refused to eat it

did not the great
philosophers

promote positive
states of mental being?

did not the great
philosophers

promote moderation
balance self denial?

happiness is a question of choice
choose wisely live in rewards of wisdom

poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!