"Metaphysically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of falling away from oneself, of facing oneself as an enemy whom one reconciles to and includes in one's larger self, is certainly a familiar process. It is a process just like this that develops one's personality. However the self may be defined metaphysically, it is for every self-conscious individual a never-ceasing battle with conflicting motives and antagonistic desires—a never-ending cycle of endeavor, failure, and success through the very ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... piece, written in 1784, in which Kant propounded his idea of a universal or cosmo-political history, which contemplating the agency of the human will upon a large scale should unfold to our view a regular stream of tendency in the great succession of events.[55] The will metaphysically considered, Kant said, is free, but its manifestations, that is to say, human actions, 'are as much under the control of universal laws of nature as any ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... or several stones, raised one above another, like a flight of steps, for assisting one to get on horseback. Metaphysically, to leave off any business in the same state as when it was begun; also, to terminate a dispute without the slightest change of mind in ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... contrast of some actions with others according to their moral distinctions: the phrase is only a comprehensive one for things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him: for, as said, he desires to know not what things are metaphysically, but what is the use of them. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... and guided or wholly repressed as the case may demand. The budding artist is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on. The boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of leading-strings. They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to be felt, and yet so strong as never to break. Moral suasion, perseveringly applied, predominates over Solomon's system. It is a very nice theory, and we may all study here, at the point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... answered, My purpose is with the fire to burn paradise, and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible compositions, and love the purity of the idea." Des Cartes having introduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis of material ideas, or certain configurations of the brain, which were as so many moulds to the influxes ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... metaphysically and mathematically number one, a unit, and therefore whole number, governed and protected by his divine Principle, God? You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine Source ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... upon man, leave him alone in his somnambulism, and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life up which he has climbed, constitutes himself the centre of the universe, dreams sordidly about his own particular god, and maunders metaphysically about his ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... thing she senses the effluvia that radiate from them and it is by this that she gauges her loves and hates or her tolerance of them. It is enough that her pictures arrive with a strange incongruous beauty which, though metaphysically an import, does not disconcert by this insistence. She knows the psychism of patterns and evolves them with strict regard for the pictural aspects in them which save them from banality as ideas. She has no preachment to offer and utters no rubbish on the subject of life and the problem. She ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... subject in my popular treatises are quite enough, and accordingly we will adopt them here: as, that the Soul consists of two parts, the Irrational and the Rational (as to whether these are actually divided, as are the parts of the body, and everything that is capable of division; or are only metaphysically speaking two, being by nature inseparable, as are convex and concave circumferences, matters not in respect of our present purpose). And of the Irrational, the one part seems common to other objects, and in ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... began first to care for each other; and then, if the evidence was satisfactory, allowing them to be married! Why, then, ask of the soul wishing to be united with God and Christ in a Christian covenant, to tear open the folded bud of this tender affection, analyze it metaphysically, measure it mathematically, and cross-examine it as a witness suspected of falsehood is questioned ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or negligent of their duty. The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes, and in proportion as they are metaphysically true they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. But this sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... because both of them deal with topics which, though they lie outside the range of our discussion, are always being confused with it. The reason is that they lie proximate to our field of thought, and are topics which are of burning interest to the metaphysically minded. It is difficult for a philosopher to realise that anyone really is confining his discussion within the limits that I have set before you. The boundary is set up just where he is beginning to get ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... meerschaum light, I behold a bearded man, Built upon capacious plan, Sabre-slashed in war or duel, Gruff of aspect, but not cruel, Metaphysically muddled, With strong beer a little fuddled, Slow in love, and deep in books, More sentimental than he looks, Swears new friendships ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the pantaloons ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... particular facts and details without the means of drawing any sort of theoretical or practical conclusion"; but that, on the other hand, the statesman, who does not take account of circumstances, infinite and infinitely combined, "is not erroneous, but stark mad—he is metaphysically mad" (On the Petition of the Unitarians). There is, or ought to be, no logical difference between the evidence required by a statesman and that appealed to by a philosopher; and since, as we have seen, the combination of principles with circumstances ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... for were He composed of physical parts, some other power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus be contradicted. He is therefore both simple and non-physical in nature. He is SIMPLE METAPHYSICALLY also, that is to say, his nature and his existence cannot be distinct, as they are in finite substances which share their formal natures with one another, and are individual only in their material aspect. Since God is one and only, his essentia ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that he is simply and plainly "unsound" on the doctrine of the Atonement; I don't charge him with heresy from his stand-point, but remember that you have not been brought into contact with Quakers, Socinians, &c., and that he may conceive of a way of reconciling metaphysically difficulties which a far inferior but less inquisitive and vorsehender geist pronounces for itself simply contrary to the word of God. There are two Greek prepositions which contain the gist of the whole matter, huper, in behalf of, and anti, instead of, in the place ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impossible to paint the unheard-of delights which these two creatures—made by heaven in a joyous moment—found, it is perhaps necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost fantastic impressions of the young man. That which persons in the social position of De Marsay, living as he lived, are best able to recognize is a girl's innocence. But, strange phenomenon! ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac |
