“We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.”

— William James

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

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William James 246

American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Original: (la) Μundo morere, ejus insaniam rejiciens: vive Deo, per ipsius cognitionem, veterem generationem repudians. Νοn facti sumus ut moreremur, sed nostra culpa morimur. Perdidit nos libera voluntas: servi facti sumus, qui liberi eramus: per peccatum venditi sumus. Νihil mali factum est a Deo: nos ipsi improbitatem produximus. Εam vero qui produxerunt, denuo repudiare possunt.
Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XI, as translated by J. E. Ryland

“Friends are found on the battlefield, and unfortunately friends are also lost. And where do we find the measure of that sacrifice? How can we account for the value of that loss? Sometimes we can find an answer in our sense of country, at other times in our Corps. But clearly we can see it in the lives that were able to continue due to the acts of others who were not so fortunate.”

Jim Webb (1946) American politician, military officer and author

[2008-03-07, http://www.jameswebb.com/speeches/iworeunion.htm, February 2000, Speech at Iwo Jima reunion]

“There are questions we could not get past if we were not set free from them by our very nature.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

56
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“We do not remember that our people - during our sad but proud Romanian history - at any time tolerated being dishonoured. Our fields are full of the dead, but not of cowards. Today we are free men with the consciousness of our rights. Slaves we are not and never were. We receive death, but not humiliation. Rest assured, we have sufficient moral strength left to find an honourable exit from a life we cannot support without honour and dignity.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

“We were one in our aim; only our paths were different.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Seeckt upon meeting Adolf Hitler for the first time (11 March 1923), quoted in John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 118, n. 1.

“Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. Thank God we found each other.”

Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) actress and first lady of the United States

On her relation with her husband, Ronald Reagan, as quoted in an interview with Vanity Fair (July 1998), and in Saving The Reagan Presidency : Trust Is The Coin Of The Realm (2005) by David M. Abshire, p. 107
Variant: Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. I can't imagine life without him.
As quoted in "End of a love story" at BBC (5 June 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/265714.stm
Context: Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. Thank God we found each other. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. Forty-six years? Can't imagine life without him.

“And if the immortality of the soul had been unable to find vindication in rational empiricism, neither is it satisfied with pantheism. To say that everything is God, and that when we die, we return to God, or more accurately, continue in Him, avails our longing nothing; for if this indeed be so, then we were in God before we were born, and if we die we return to where we were before being born, then the human soul, the individual consciousness, is perishable. And since we know very well that God, the personal and conscious God of Christian monotheism, is simply the provider, and above all the guarantor, of our immortality, pantheism is said, and rightly said to be merely atheism disguised; and in my opinion, undisguised.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

“We plan alone but we fulfill our plans together with the enemy, as it were, in accordance with his opposition.”

Ivan Konev (1897–1973) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "How Wars End: Eye-witness Accounts of the Fall of Berlin" - by Vladimir Sevruk - History - 1974 - Page 27.

“We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.”

Aurelius Augustinus De doctrina christiana

1:14 http://books.google.com/books?id=9dJGZkTAqJsC&q="we+were+ensnared+by+the+wisdom+of+the+serpent+we+are+set+free+by+the+foolishness+of+god"&pg=PA10#v=onepage
Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur.
De doctrina christiana

“Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.

“We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.”

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William James 246

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