The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expre...ssion--it is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for any ... noun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifyability. We say that a... sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express--that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as true, or reject it as being false.... To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around... the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert--a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word "parent" has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a n...oun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about "being a parent," we now find ourselves talking about learning how "to parent." . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double sign...ificance.... In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he... cannot quite bury under the Finite.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
OUR Latin books in motly row, Invite us to our task--... Gay Horace, stately Cicero: Yet there's one verb, when once we know, No higher skill we ask: This ranks all other lore above-- We've learned "'Amare' means 'to love'!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »