Metaphysical Quotes

The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward. ~ Aberjhani

Deleuze's findings are confirmed by those of an experienced woman psychiatrist who for many years has made a study of automatic writing. In conversation this lady has informed me that, sooner or later, most automatists produce scripts in which certain metaphysical ideas are set forth. The theme of these scripts is always the same: namely, the the ground of the individual soul is identical with the divine Ground of all being. Returning to their normal state, the automatists read what they have written and often find it in complete disharmony with what they have always believed. ~ Aldous Huxley

This homosexual dream of perfect metaphysical union is not so much a reflected heterosexual ideal as it is the compensation for having wept in the darkness. ~ Thomas E. Yingling

Communication is a major key to building any strong relationship, whether it is the relationship one has with oneself or with others. Sinful communication weakens yourself, weakens those you care about, and thus weakens your team. ~ Shay Dawkins

Every answer can be followed by another question. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Darling, you know and I know that everything is straight between us at last beyond the furthest abstract definition in metaphysical terms or any terms you want to specify or sweetly impose or harken back. ~ John Kerouac

It can no longer be claimed on demographic grounds that the 'vast majority' of Americans believe in Christ and the gospel. We do remain a highly religious people, especially when compared with Western Europe, but Americans are increasingly satisfying their metaphysical needs through forms of spirituality that have little or nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. ~ Michael Babcock

Be great. Get thy "Self". Know who you are. Beyond this body, and being. You are more than what you're seeing. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition. If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein "real" beauty is said to reside. ~ Dave Hickey

A quick enlightenment tends to do more harm than good. Wise may easily become unwise. ~ Iva Kenaz

That is why diplomats smile: it is not hypocrisy - it is a sort of metaphysical awareness of the human impossibility of their task. ~ Charles Malik

It's a difficult thing to be a man. To try to be noble and honorable in a world of conflict and strife. To distinguish selfish desire from sincere concern. To know when to fight and when to forfeit. ~ Brownell Landrum

I shall tell you about God once you've reached your imaginary heaven. Then, give me a call. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

You're going to have to do better than that if you want to get into my metaphysical pants. ~ Allison Pang

We may abandon a holistic, metaphysical ideal of natural law reconciled with cultural configurations; but we cannot abandon a vision of a humanity freed from such pathologies without simultaneously siding with the worst kind of system-reproductive education. ~ Mark Murphy

The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic. ~ James K. Morrow

He nods, then squints across the room. "Not all those who wander are lost," he says. He's still squinting. I wonder if he's practiced this squint - a squint-stare off into the metaphysical distance. I'm realizing he's kind of handsome. But then again, it might just be that he cares about something.
"What is that?" I ask. "Did Jesus Christ say that?"
"No," he says. "Bilbo Baggins said that. ~ Patrick Somerville

We are by the river bank. The river is very, very low. Almost dry. But mostly is wet stones. Grey on the outside. We walk on the stones for awhile. You pick up a stone and crash it onto the others. As it breaks, it is quite wet inside and is very colorful, very pretty. I pick up a stone and break it and run toward the pieces to see the colors. They are beautiful. I laugh and bring the pieces back to you and you are doing the same with your pieces. We keep on crashing stones for hours, anxious to see the beautiful new colors. We are playing. The playfulness of our activity does not presuppose that it is a particular form of play with its own rules. Rather the attitude that carries us through the activity, a playful attitude, turns the activity into play. Our activity has no rules, though it is certainly intentional activity and we both understand what we are doing. The playfulness that gives meaning to our activity includes uncertainty, but in this case the uncertainty is an openness to surprise. This is a particular metaphysical attitude that does not expect the world to be neatly packaged, ruly. Rules may fail to explain what we are doing. We are not self-important, we are not fixed in particular constructions of ourselves, which is part of saying that we are open to self-construction. We are not worried about competence. We are not wedded to a particular way of doing things. While playful we have not abandoned ourselves to, nor are we stuck in, any particular 'world.' We ar ~ María Lugones

My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function. ~ Tom Robbins

My Ancestor Series of adventure-thrillers run like a raging river. I'm now in the editing process with my next thriller, "The Apothecary." Please go to my website for excerpts, synopses, and book trailers of all my works: http://www.gracepublisihing.org. ~ Marshall Chamberlain

The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably. Unlike me. I ~ Haruki Murakami

Metaphysical rebellion is the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the
whole of creation. It is metaphysical because it contests the ends of man and of creation. The slave
protests against the condition in which he finds himself within his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel
protests against the condition in which he finds himself as a man. The rebel slave affirms that there is
something in him that will not tolerate the manner in which his master treats him; the metaphysical rebel
declares that he is frustrated by the universe. For both of them, it is not only a question of pure and simple
negation. In both cases, in fact, we find a value judgment in the name of which the rebel refuses to
approve the condition in which he finds himself. ~ Albert Camus

In the act of watching the television news, audiences cross the globe, one moment viewing a scene in a wide aerial shot, the next moment seeing an emotional close up of a victim's face. By extending the physical senses to impossible dimensions, media provide audiences a near metaphysical adventure. ~ James Houran

His mission is not to wait until the world ends, but to find a way to the other side before it does. To prop open the door before it can be locked. To tie a suture before the fatal wound is made. To let in the moonlight before the sun is allowed to rise. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme ... ~ Karl Popper

Labor and work, as well as action, are also rooted in natality in so far as they have the task to provide and preserve the world for, to foresee and reckon with, the constant influx of newcomers who are born into the world as strangers. However, of the three, action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought. The ~ Hannah Arendt

Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing. ~ Isaac Newton

Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods. ~ Francis Parker Yockey

I like filmmakers that try to touch upon the metaphysical, the things that are behind all this, that you can't actually physically interact with, but are somehow intuitively there. Maybe you can see the ashes of that fire or the echoes of something happening on a domain not-here, whether that be coincidence, whether that be familiarity with somebody who's a stranger. ~ Mike Cahill

Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary. ~ Albert Camus

The reflection on the surface of the water is often mistaken for the mysteries that lie beneath. Likewise, the reflection of the moon is mistaken for its own light. In the quest for wisdom, each person must emerge from the illusions of the world and begin the journey towards the sacred mountain. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

There are no human gods here, just hoods who think they are. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Human free will implies God's prior decision not to tamper with the metaphysical base of that free will. It also implies man's ability to reject the persuasion God uses to influence that free will while leaving its metaphysical base intact! Persuasion, not compulsion, is what even He must rely upon! And persuasion, by its very definition, must be resistible! ~ Don Richardson

I believe that I can create whatever I want to create. If I can put my head on it right, study it, learn the patterns, and - it's hard to put into words, it's real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense, but I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be. ~ Will Smith

We are not even a speck of dust in the cells of the Cosmos."-Han Storm ~ H. Gibson

Science and Spirituality are two sides of the same coin and we cannot separate one from the other. Science is trying to find the truth in an objective or physical manner where as spirituality tries it subjectively or metaphysically. ~ Thomas Vazhakunnathu

The Clochemerle 1929 was a magnificent wine. Drinking it in small sips, his grace the Archbishop felt himself well disposed towards the Clochemerlins. It takes all sorts to make a world and a Church, to people Heaven and Hell. But there was no denying that it took capable vignerons to make a wine like this, men whose minds must on no account be distracted by excessive metaphysical cares. ~ Gabriel Chevallier

--perhaps a soul is what you have spent your life making, not a piece of metaphysical equipment shipped ready-made from the factory, another myth like original sin, which you were outfitted with at birth and could somehow lose, like men high and low sometimes lost their humanity-- ~ Bob Shacochis

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then DO NOT be afraid to LEAVE someone who is messing with YOUR MOOD in a detrimental way. ~ Shay Dawkins

The distinction, in God, between a trans-ontological and transpersonal Essence on the one hand, and an already relative auto-determination on the other--this last is Being or the Person--marks the whole difference between the strictly metaphysical or sapiential perspective on the one hand and cataphatic and ontologistic theories in so far as they are explicit on the other. Let us remember at this point that the Intellect--which is precisely what makes evident to us the absoluteness of the Self and the relativity of 'objectivations'--is only 'human' to the extent that it is accessible to us, but it is not so in itself; it is essentially *increatus et increabile* (Eckhart), although 'accidentally' created by virtue of its reverberations in the macrocosm and in microcosms; geometrically speaking, the Intellect is a ray rather than a circle, it 'emanates' from God rather than 'reflecting' Him. 'Allah is known to Himself alone' say the Sufis; this saying, while it apparently excludes man from a direct and total knowledge, in reality enunciates the essential and mysterious divinity of pure Intellect; formulae of this kind are only fully understandable in the light of the often quoted hadith: 'He who knows his soul knows his Lord. ~ Frithjof Schuon

My intention was to grapple with the metaphysical meaning behind Scheherazade and present that meaning in its essence. Scheherazade is the symbol of the savior. She weaves tales not to save her own life, but to save humanity from its unending retributive response to injury. ~ Alonzo King

The untutored egotist merely wants what he wants. Give him a religious education, and it becomes obvious to him, it becomes axiomatic, that what he wants is what God wants, that his cause is the cause of whatever he may happen to regard as the True Church and that any compromise is a metaphysical Munich, an appeasement of Radical Evil. ~ Aldous Huxley

In the realm of science, all attempts to find any evidence of supernatural beings, of metaphysical concepts, as God, immortality, infinity, etc have thus far failed, and if we are honest, we must confess that in science there exists no God, no immortality, no soul or mind, as distinct from the body. ~ Charles Proteus Steinmetz

[He] had riposted with the proper metaphysical statements, yet he was disturbed. ~ Robert Silverberg

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. ~ Alan Watts

Don't call me babe. And next time I'm letting my Metaphysical answering meachine get it. ~ Dana Marie Bell

Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation wasn't his thing. If something really existed you, had to except it as a reality whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles Logic didn't give birth to a reality. Reality came first and the principles of logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky. ~ Haruki Murakami

If this is a dream, I hope I remember it. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

If we want to make sense of the possibility of successful inductive inference, and if we want to explain the possibility of laws of nature, we will need to appeal to something like natural kinds. This is, to be sure, a metaphysical commitment, but it is a metaphysical commitment that is implicit in science, as I see it. ~ Hilary Kornblith

All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem (25) To have thee crowned withal. ~ William Shakespeare

It is in this mutual dependence of the functions and the aid which they reciprocally lend one another that are founded the laws which determine the relations of their organs and which possess a necessity equal to that of metaphysical or mathematical laws, since it is evident that the seemly harmony between organs which interact is a necessary condition of existence of the creature to which they belong and that if one of these functions were modified in a manner incompatible with the modifications of the others the creature could no longer continue to exist. ~ Georges Cuvier

Music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up. Because music has a metaphysical quality it really makes your life beautiful. ~ Wayne Coyne

Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages. ~ Benjamin Whorf

When an artist is asked to speak about form, you expect something different than when a critic talks about it. Because you think that somewhere between sentences and words, the secret will slip out. I am trying to give you that secret; it isn't a secret at all, but it is building solidly, not using secrets. I had been trying to extend into metaphysical extension; that film is changing, metamorphic; that is, infinite; the idea that the movement of life is totally important rather than a single life. My films were built on an incline, an increase in intensity. I hoped to make a form which was infinite, the changingness of things. I thought I would want to find a total form which conveyed that sense, particularly in reference to an Oriental subject. My impression was: one is walking down a corridor of a hotel. One hears a sound, opens a door and a man is playing; one listens for three minutes and closes the door. The music went on before you opened the door and it continues after you close the door. There was neither beginning nor end. Western music increases in intensity to a climax and then resolves itself. Oriental music is infinite; it goes on and on. The Chinese theater goes on for hours and hours with time for lunch moving scenery, etc. ~ Maya Deren

Since the fall of man was ethical in character (not metaphysical) the unregenerate and regenerate share the facts of the world and the rules of thought, but their interpretation and use of them are far from neutral. ~ Greg L. Bahnsen

What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the Mandela, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening. ~ Terence McKenna

It was sort of a metaphysical 'that's what she said. ~ Rainbow Rowell

You either WIN or you LEARN. Either way, you WIN! ~ Shay Dawkins

Even revolution, particularly
revolution, which claims to be materialist, is only a limitless metaphysical crusade. But can totality claim
to be unity? That is the question which this book must answer. So far we can only say that the purpose of
this analysis is not to give, for the hundredth time, a description of the revolutionary phenomenon, nor
once more to examine the historic or economic causes of great revolutions. Its purpose is to discover in
certain revolutionary data the logical sequence, the explanations, and the invariable themes of
metaphysical rebellion. ~ Albert Camus

From the metaphysical point of view there is nothing that can touch the formless except the art of music which in itself is formless. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

I have deeper journeys to take. Metaphysical journeys to see Christ. Shaman journeys. It's what I have been elected by God to do. ~ Clive Barker

We create our own reality because of our inner emotional - our subconscious - reality draws us into those situations from which we learn. We experience it as strange things happening to us (and) we meet the people in our lives that we need to learn from. And so we create these circumstances at a very deep metaphysical and subconscious level. ~ Edgar Mitchell

At what point will I be able to write an e-mail to my grandson in Bahrain merely by thinking it?"

"Thinking it?" Alif smiled contemptuously. "I expect never. Quantum computing will be the next thing, but I don't think it will be capable of transcribing thought."

"Quantum? Oh dear, I've never heard of that."

It will use qubits instead of-well, that's kind of complicated. Regular computers use a binary language to figure things out and talk to each other-ones and zeroes. Quantum computers could use ones and zeroes in an unlimited number of states, so in theory, they could store massive amounts of data and perform tasks that regular computers can't perform."

"States?"

"Positions in space and time. Ways of being."

"Now it is you who are metaphysical. Let me rephrase what I think you have said in language from my own field of study: they say that each word in the Quran has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction. Is this similar to what you mean?"

"Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I mean. I've never heard anybody make that comparison. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

Does that answer your Questions, Doctor? ~ Alan Moore

The many mysteries boil down to three. There is the kind that can be solved: who planted the bomb? Will the travellers reach their destination? What is Mother's childhood secret? There is the supernatural: dark metaphysical forces, never to be fully exposed, yet hinting of themselves in a way that suggests the author could reveal more if he chose, and might do, in his next book. And there are the insoluble mysteries: what lies beyond life, what beauty is for, why the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper, what goes on in the heads of other people, why life keeps fucking us over just when we're doing all right
these are the mysteries the books dealing with them can't solve, and it is for this reason that the best of these books are the ones we keep rereading. ~ James Meek

Architecture is bound to situation. And I feel like the site is a metaphysical link, a poetic link, to what a building can be. ~ Steven Holl

The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization. ~ Carl Schmitt

One of the basic tenets of all metaphysical systems of thought is that we create our own reality in accord with our beliefs. ~ Mary K. Greer

The pictures achieve something rarely articulated about the metaphysical state of swimming: The body, immersed, feels amplified, heavier and lighter at the same time. Weightless yet stronger. ~ Leanne Shapton

It has always been asked in the spirit of: 'What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?' I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all 'sources' are liable to lead us into errors at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. …. The proper answer to my question 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' is I believe, 'By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and – if we can train ourselves to do so – by criticizing our own theories or guesses.' ~ Karl Popper

Maybe the siren was was a fire truck? Mercer couldn't see one anywhere, but like some bounding St. Bernard of the metaphysical, he couldn't quite let go of the belief that there must be an objective reality out there, beyond his own head. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

In conclusion, I would like to say why I think the question of what constitutes a pseudoscience is important. Unlike the logical positivists, I am not grinding an anti-metaphysical ax, and unlike Popper, I am not grinding an anti-Freudian or anti-Marxian one. My concern is social: society faces the twin problems of lack of public concern with the advancement of science, and lack of public concern with the important ethical issues now arising in science and technology ... One reason for this dual lack of concern is the wide popularity of pseudoscience and the occult among the general public. Elucidation of how science differs from pseudoscience is the philosophical side of an attempt to overcome public neglect of genuine science. ~ Paul Thagard

Having your cake and eating it too is how Life was meant to be. Everything is possible. And the things we want the most are not only possible, they're highly probable. ~ Debbianne DeRose

Whatever else one might think of poets, they are excellent barometers for metaphysical shenanigans. Not as good as proper prophets, but these are fallen times. ~ Max Gladstone

We live in a thought-suggestive Universe. The sky's the limit. Believe and you'll receive. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

In the philosophy of mind - as, indeed, in more important matters - [the twentieth century] has been a less than fully satisfactory century. We pretty much wasted the first half, so it seems to me, in a neurotic and obsessive preoccupation with refuting Cartesian skepticism about other minds. In the event, it didn't matter that the skeptics weren't refuted since there turned out not to be any. The only philosophers who really were doubtful about the existence of other minds were relentless anti-Cartesians like Wittgenstein, Dewey, Ryle, Quine and Rorty, and they were equally doubtful about the existence of their own. What we got for our efforts was mostly decades of behaviorism and the persistent bad habit of trying to run epistemological or semantic arguments for metaphysical conclusions. The end of this, I fear, is still not with us. ~ Jerry A. Fodor

As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is yearning. ~ Frank O'Hara

Knowledge does not abolish faith but gives it a more inward meaning. He who "knows" theoretically does indeed enjoy metaphysical certainty, but such certainty does not yet penetrate his whole being; it is as if, instead of believing a description, one saw the object described but without the sight of it implying either a detailed knowledge or a possession of the object, for a single visual perspective does not of course teach us the whole nature of the thing seen; thus there is certainty regarding the object as such in this case, but uncertainty regarding its integral nature. To "know" an object perfectly means to "possess" it, "become" it, "be" it; if the sight of an object is very much more than an abstract belief in its existence, the realization of the object will likewise be infinitely more than the sight of it; metaphysical certainty thus stands in a sense between belief--"faith" in the ordinary sense of the word--and the realization of union. As long as a man is not delivered from the chains of existence, there is always an element of "faith" in his "knowledge"; otherwise there would be nothing separating him from the Reality "known" or "to be known". ~ Frithjof Schuon

There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable
unobservable in principle
it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality
it's just a figment of our imaginations. ~ Leonard Susskind

Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

What is enthralling and illuminating about The Metaphysical Club is its portraits of individuals and their milieus. Menand is wonderfully deft at evoking a climate of ideas or a cultural sensibility, embodying it in a character, and moving his characters into and out of one another's lives. What might have been a jumble of intellectual movements and colorful minor figures ( ... ) is instead a subtle weave of entertaining narrative and astute interpretation. ~ George Scialabba

It is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests - that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Macbeth is a play that points to the advent, much like the turbulent last century of the Middle Ages, of a modern age gradually deracinated from its Christian grounding and increasingly enamored of a neopagan notion of virtu, of potentially infinite human achievement severed from metaphysical considerations. ~ William Shakespeare

A metaphysical understanding of what the world is, how it works, and how it all fits together, in general and abstract terms, could be the most real and important thing there is. In that case, we don't do metaphysics so that we can stay healthy and wealthy: we want to stay healthy and wealthy so that we can do metaphysics. ~ Stephen Mumford

Finally, and most importantly, we must be concerned about the implications of multiverse theories for the future development of science itself. The multiverse theorists know that they are on weak ground regarding the Testability Principle, and rather than admit that their theories are not science, they argue instead that the rules of science must be adapted to accommodate this kind of metaphysical speculation. They want to change the very definition of science. This is a very slippery slope. ~ Jim Baggott

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image. ~ Aldous Huxley

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [ ... ] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Instantaneous interpretation hails from the Limbo that produced unsensed sensibilia, unconscious inference, incorrigible statements, negative facts and Objektive. These are ideas which philosophers force on the world to preserve some pet epistemological or metaphysical theory. ~ Norwood Russell Hanson

Oh, the things we can achieve when we aspire to the greatness within ourselves. ~ B. Roman

Some historians subsequently said that the twentieth century actually started in 1914, when war broke out, because it was first war in history in which so many countries took part, in which so many people died and in which airships and airplanes flew and bombarded the rear and towns and civilians, and submarines sunk ships and artillery could lob shells ten or twelve kilometers. And the Germans invented gas and the English invented tanks and scientists discovered isotopes and general theory of relativity, according to which nothing was metaphysical, but relative.And when Senegalese fusiliers first saw an airplane they thought it was a tame bird and one of the Senegalese soldiers cut a lump of flesh from a dead horse and threw it as far as he could in order to lure it away. And airships and airplanes flew through the sky and the horses were terribly frightened. And writers and poets endeavored to find new ways of expressing it best and in 1916 they invented Dadaism because everything seemed crazy to them. And in Russia they invented a revolution. And the soldiers wore around their neck or wrist a tag with their name and the number of their regiment to indicate who was who, and where to send a telegram of condolences, but if the explosion tore off their head or arm and the tag was lost, the military command would announce that they were unknown soldiers, and in most capital cities they instituted an eternal flame lest they be forgotten, because fire preserves the memory of some ~ Patrik Ouředník

Man is made of thought, of will and of love: he can think truth or error, he can will good or evil, he can love beauty or ugliness. Now thought of the true - or knowledge of the real - demands on the one hand willing of the good and on the other love of the beautiful, hence virtue, for virtue is none other than beauty of soul; that is why the Greeks, who were aesthetes as well as thinkers, included virtue within philosophy. Without beauty of soul, all willing is sterile, it is petty and closes itself to grace; and in an analogous manner: without effort of will, all spiritual thought ultimately remains superficial and ineffectual and leads to pretension. Virtue coincides with a sensibility proportioned - or conformed - to the Truth, and that is why the soul of the sage soars above things and thereby above itself, if one may put it thus; whence the disinterestedness, nobleness and generosity of great souls. Quite clearly, the consciousness of metaphysical principles cannot go hand in hand with moral pettiness, such as ambition and hypocrisy : "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. ~ Frithjof Schuon

If a religious book makes you harbor ill thoughts about those with differing faith, then, you're reading the wrong crap of late. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non reductive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche's preposterous mustache which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead. ~ Maira Kalman

I know if I died tonight, I would die a happy man at peace with myself knowing Gloria's story would finally be told - a mysterious and astonishing story that defies the timeworn precepts of modern psychology and psychiatry - where insanity, genius, the metaphysical, and the mystery of life come together to beguile and confound our contemporary understanding of the mind and its limitless powers to heal.
Dr. Adam Jaxon ~ Linden Morningstar

A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, 'The Clock' is more than a movie or even a work of art. It is so strange and other-ish that it becomes a stream-of-consciousness algorithm unto itself - something almost inhuman. ~ Jerry Saltz

The Earth is beautiful. If you start living its beauty, enjoying its joys with no guilt in your heart, you are in paradise. If you condemn everything, every small joy, then the same Earth turns into a hell. It is a question of your own inner transformation. It is not a change of place, it is a change of inner space. Live joyously, guiltlessly, live totally, live intensely. And then heaven is no more a metaphysical concept, it is your own experience. ~ Rajneesh

Order what you feel like eating," says your impatient dinner companion. But the problem is that you don't KNOW what you feel like eating. What you feel like eating is precisely what you are trying to figure out.
Order what you feel like eating" is just a piece of advice about the criteria you should be using to guide your deliberations. It is not a solution to your menu problem - just as "Do the right thing" and "Tell the truth" are only suggestions about criteria, not answers to actual dilemmas. The actual dilemma is what, in the particular case staring you in the face, the right thing to do or the honest thing to say really is. And making those kinds of decisions - about what is right or what is truthful - IS like deciding what to order in a restaurant, in the sense that getting a handle on tastiness is no harder or easier (even though it is generally less important) than getting a handle on justice or truth. ~ Louis Menand

There were some things it was better not to know. They caused "metaphysical" anguish, for which there was as yet no remedy. When it was worried, the Tribe was inhibited and unable to act.
It was very bad for everyone. The Tribe started to produce toxins that poisoned it. Its long-term survival was more important than short-term knowledge of the truth. If an eye had seen something that the brain knew was dangerous for the rest of the organism, it was better for the brain to put out that eye. ~ Bernard Werber