“Pity for him who one day looks upon
his inward sphinx and questions it. He is lost.”

Pity for Him Who One Day.
Los Cisnes y Otros Poemas (The Swans and Other Poems) (1905)

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Do you have more details about the quote "Pity for him who one day looks upon his inward sphinx and questions it. He is lost." by Rubén Darío?
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Rubén Darío 6
Nicaraguan poet and writer 1867–1916

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“He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty.
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

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“Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

November 1784, p. 566
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

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