F. H. Bradley

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

I will begin with the self-styled "Christian" party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss.

The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care.

The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.

“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.

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.”

There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.

The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.