“Is it fitting that our intelligence exert itself and labor in speculations which are not binding upon us, in fruitless argumentation, in laws which have no application to us, while we leave to habit and abandon to mechanical observance our great debt to our Creator?”

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Is it fitting that our intelligence exert itself and labor in speculations which are not binding upon us, in fruitless …" by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto?
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto 13
Italian rabbi 1707–1746

Related quotes

Edith Wharton photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Alexander Pope photo

“Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Matthew Arnold photo

“That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.”

Variant: Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Felix Adler photo
John Dryden photo

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century
John C. Maxwell photo

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Hermann von Helmholtz photo

“Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.”

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) physicist and physiologist

"On the Conservation of Force" (1862), p. 278
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)
Context: Every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the culture of peoples of distant lands or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. We continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilised life remain unawakened.
It is not to be denied that, in the natural sciences, this kind of interest is wanting. Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.

John Dickinson photo

Related topics