《蔡志忠哲理漫画》系列，三联书店
Montesquieu: Everyone has a sense of shyness! But one must know how to overcome it, and never abandon it. ////—To overcome it without abandoning it: nicely put.
Pascal: It is no shame for a person to yield to pain; it is shameful to yield to pleasure. ////—Much admired.
Pascal: Man’s greatness lies in the fact that humanity knows itself to be unhappy; a tree does not know itself to be unhappy. Thus, to know oneself unhappy is unhappiness, but man’s greatness lies precisely in knowing himself unhappy.
Pascal: Man is like a reed, the most fragile thing in nature, yet a thinking reed. In the universe, anything can destroy him with ease; a wisp of smoke, a drop of water are enough to kill him. But though the universe can destroy him, he is still nobler than the destroyer, because he knows he will die, and knows that the universe is mightier than he is; yet the universe knows nothing of this. So all human dignity lies in thought; man is great because he thinks. The fearful, do not be afraid; but the fearless must be afraid. ////—Classic.
Kierkegaard: Prayer does not change God, but the one who prays. ////—Good.
Kierkegaard: Silence is the quality of inward life; only one who knows when to be silent is qualified to speak, and qualified to act.
Kierkegaard: To truly become a great genius, one must be an “exception”; to become great, one must be isolated. ////—Agreed.
Kant: The aim of thinking is not objective knowledge, but a kind of confidence within the realm of objective knowledge.
Hegel: A broad mind always extends the realm of interest to countless things.
Hegel: In pure light, just as in pure darkness, nothing can be seen clearly. ////—Good.
Maupassant: The union of the senses is nothing more than the imprint of a union of souls.
Thoreau: Every step my feet have taken is a road I myself had to walk.
Thoreau: I have never found a better friend than solitude. ////—Alas.
Thoreau: The richest person is the one who does not need to spend money to find happiness.
Thoreau: What you have spent half your life searching for, you search for as if in a dream—ahng—once you find it, you become its captive.
Voltaire: Love truth, but pardon error.
Voltaire: Judge a person by the questions he asks, not by his answers.
Russell: The fiercest and most dangerous beast human beings must fight is humanity itself.
Albert Schweitzer: The optimistic person sees green lights everywhere; the pessimistic person sees only red lights; … and the truly wise person is color-blind. ////—Good.
Albert Schweitzer: My knowledge is pessimistic, but my wishes and hopes are optimistic.
Beckett: Time will pass even if you do nothing to kill it.
Fromm: Immature love says, “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says, “I need you because I love you.” ////—Very much agreed.
Fromm: The problem of the nineteenth century was that God is dead; the problem of the twentieth century was that man is dead.
Democritus: The road up and the road down are only one road, and it is the same road.
Democritus: One should try to think a great deal, rather than know a great deal. To fight with one’s own heart is a shameful thing, but such a victory marks you as a thoughtful person.
Augustine: Anything worthy of being called ideal must necessarily bear the essence of truth, goodness, and beauty. Do not try to understand what you can believe, but believe what you can understand.
Augustine: O God! Please grant me a lofty heart, but not yet.
Darwin: This world is not only bodily existence; there is also something that cannot be proved.
Dumas fils: Women have two ways of loving; they may love with their hearts, or they may love with their senses.
Huxley: If love were left to chance, the result would surely be indifference without passion.
Rodin: For the artist, everything is beautiful. ////—Good.
Aesop’s Fables: Do not complain casually about the present state of affairs, because repeated changes may make things even worse.
Kausitaki Upanishad: Meditate on the universe as the breast.
Kausitaki Upanishad: One must not refuse a woman who asks for sex; one must not slander the blazing sun. ////—What is the connection between these two sentences?
Descartes: Conscience is the most evenly distributed thing in the world; even the most fastidious person in the world would not complain that he lacks conscience. ////—Good.
Plato: Love is a divine madness.
Whitman: I do not seek happiness, because I myself am happiness.
Rousseau: Possession is equivalent to no possession unless both sides possess each other. At most, one possesses the other’s body, not that person.
Gorky: True love, like faith, requires innocence.
Freud: Do not forget: beauty can last only a few years, while we must keep each other company for an entire lifetime.
Fromm: Love is an activity of faith; without faith, love cannot be deep. ////—Agreed.
Fromm: Love does not need vows and pledges; it only requires that one give oneself without reservation, hoping that one’s love can stir waves in the other.
Spinoza: Inferiority, though opposite to pride, is in fact the closest to it.
Martin Luther: Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would shatter, today I would still plant my apple tree.
Martin Luther: Faith, like light, should always be simple and unyielding; yet love, like heat, should spread in all directions and yield to the manifold needs of our fellow human beings.
Martin Luther: Wisdom without courage is futile; faith without hope is worthless; for “hope” can endure and overcome too much misfortune and evil.
Wilde: The purpose of life is self-development; the highest duty of a human being is the duty one owes to oneself.
Wilde: Where there is sorrow, there is happiness. Most people in the world cannot understand the meaning of this sentence. Yet unless one thoroughly experiences this layer of meaning, one’s whole life will be lived in bewilderment. ////—Good.
Wilde: Old people believe everything; middle-aged people doubt everything; young people know everything.
Bacon: Knowledge is power! … Knowledge is a kind of joy, and curiosity is the germ of knowledge. ////—The latter half is worth praising.
Hermann Hesse: Solitude enabled a person to discover oneself.
André Gide: The wise learn far more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
Schopenhauer: Money represents humanity’s abstract happiness; therefore, those who can no longer have concrete pleasures often put all their thoughts into chasing money.
Camus: A true sage bears no contempt for anything.
Emerson: When the sky is darkest, people can see the stars. ////—Superb!
Emerson: We travel the world in search of beauty, but if beauty does not exist within us, there is nowhere to find it.
《Historical Maxims》，Hainan Publishing House
What will one day be able to destroy America will be things like prosperity at any cost, peace at any cost, replacing responsibility first with security first, the pursuit of an easy life, and the survival strategy of getting rich overnight, and so on. — Theodore Roosevelt
Education … has produced a large crowd of people who can read but cannot tell what is worth reading; they are all victims of sensation and cheap charm. — G. M. Trevelyan
Great civilized nations are not conquered by foreign enemies before they are destroyed from within. — Will Durant
For democracy, the most important thing is not that great wealth should not exist, but that great wealth should not always belong to the same people; thus, the rich will emerge, but they will not form a class. — Tocqueville
Rather than saying democracy is a form of government, it is better to say it is a series of principles. — Woodrow Wilson
Democracy not only makes everyone forget their ancestors; it also leads them to neglect their descendants, and separates them from their contemporaries. Each person is forever cast into a condition of being alone with himself, and may thus fall into the danger of being imprisoned in solitude. — Tocqueville
The most exquisite color printing and wide-angle photography have provided us with pictures of everyday trivialities that are more popular and more lifelike than the real thing. We forget that what we are seeing is triviality, and notice only how perfect the reproduction is. Humanity has realized its dream, manufacturing an exact image of the Grand Canyon through the magic of photography. As a result, people do not worship the beauty of nature more; instead, they worship their cameras—and themselves. — Daniel J. Boorstin
Without faith, despotism can still rule, but freedom cannot … If moral restraints do not grow correspondingly stronger as political restraints are relaxed, then how can society be kept from destruction by talent? And if a people who has become its own master does not obey God, then what is to be done? — Tocqueville ////—Makes sense.
Although for the individual person, the sincerity of faith is very important, that is not so for society. Society neither fears nor hopes for another life; for society, what matters most is not that all citizens recognize the true faith, but that religion should be recognized. — Tocqueville ////—Makes sense.
When God wants to punish us, he lets us believe our own advertising. — Boorstin.
Today’s tyrants do not rule with sticks and fists, but disguise themselves as market researchers, enticing their subjects with utility and comfort. — McLuhan
The relation of philosophy to the study of the real world is like the relation of masturbation to sex. — Marx and Engels, The German Ideology ////—Did Marx and Engels really say this? It would be more appropriate to call it fantasy, wouldn’t it?
A person should not go into politics unless he sincerely does not wish to get involved in it. — Henry Adams
What I criticize is not the lure of forbidden pleasures, but the temptation to become utterly immersed in permitted amusements. — Tocqueville ////—Good.
《A Hundred Maxims on Religion》，Shanghai People’s Publishing House
Where there is life, there is hope. — Talmud, Berakhot 9:1 (Judaism)
The ideal person possesses the strength of a man and the compassion of a woman. — Zohar 4:145 (Judaism)
If you do good, then you do good for yourselves; if you do evil, then you do evil for yourselves. — The Qur’an 17:7 (Islam)
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has its own worries. — Matthew 6:34 (Christianity)
Though greed for power and profit is certainly not praiseworthy, complete absence of desire does not exist in this world either. — Laws of Manu 2:2 (Hinduism) ////—Not bad.
You should find a teacher for yourself, and you should also find a student! — Talmud, Avot 1:6 (Judaism)
The best among you are those who are kindest to their wives. — Tirmidhi Hadith 10:11 (Islam)
Finding a spouse is as difficult as parting the waters of the Red Sea. — Talmud, Sotah 2:17 (Judaism)
A man who takes a wife must not do so with the thought of divorcing her. — Talmud, Yevamot 37:72 (Judaism)
A married man may not leave home without his wife’s permission. — Zohar 1:79 (Judaism)
You should gently forgive everyone.) The Qur’an 15:85 (Islam)
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. — Proverbs 25:21 (Judeo-Christianity) ////—But after all, in Judeo-Christianity the word “enemy” is extremely common, whereas in more tolerant religions there simply are no “enemies,” and there is no question at all of whether to give him food.
If you have not stood in your companion’s place, do not lightly blame him. — Talmud, Avot 2:4 (Judaism)
Do not walk upon the earth with arrogant self-satisfaction; you can never split the earth apart, and never rival the mountains in height. — The Qur’an 17:37 (Islam)
The strong must not despise the weak; the weak should respect the strong. — First Epistle of Clement 38:2 (Christianity)
God created only one man so that he would not say to another, “My ancestors are better than your ancestors.” — Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:5 (Judaism)
Among the wise of all people, when he finds no listener, he remains silent; like a wine seller, when he finds no one wanting wine, he does not hold out the cup. — Bahá’í Scriptures 235 (Bahá’í Faith)
2006年9月2日
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply