“Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!”
John Donne (1572–1631) English poet
No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, January 25, 1629
LXXX Sermons (1640)
Source: House of Leaves
“Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!”
John Donne (1572–1631) English poet
No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, January 25, 1629
LXXX Sermons (1640)
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor
On Being a Real Person (1943)
Context: Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man is his endowment with personal capacities. The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distances.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
Aids to Reflection (1873), Aphorism 1
“All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle… is another riddle.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
The Divinity College Address (1838)
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman
"Do We Live Again?" an interview with Edison, as quoted in Mr. Edison's New Argument from Design" in The Illustrated London News (3 May 1924).
1920s
Karl Popper book Conjectures and Refutations
Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"
Context: The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.
“Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.”
Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher
Misattributed to Plato in Laws by Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_Quotes. Actual source: William Fleming, as quoted in Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay by Samuel Austin Allibone, 1816–1889. http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/74.html <br class="br">Misattributed
Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist
Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science; quoting from "There is some soul of goodness in things evil / Would men observingly distil it out", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act iv. sc. i
First Principles (1862)