Esse Quotes & Sayings

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world; yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations; and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?' (Berkeley, 1710: 25) — George Berkeley

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- From a letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5th, 1676.
The metaphor was first recorded in 1159 by John of Salisbury and attributed to Bernard of Chartres:
Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea. — Isaac Newton

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem. — Erin Morgenstern

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees. (Esse) — Czeslaw Milosz

Any man may make a mistake; none but a fool will stick to it. Second thoughts are best as the proverb says.
[Lat., Cujusvis hominis est errare; nullius, nisi insipientis, in errore perseverae. Posteriores enim cogitationes (ut aiunt) sapientiores solent esse.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)." Or, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? — George Berkeley

Knowest thou not that kings have long hands?
[Lat., An nescis longos regibus esse manus?] — Ovid

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.
[Lat., Et metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agundus,
Funditis humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo,
Omnia suffuscans mortis nigrore, neque ullam
Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit.] — Lucretius

To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
[Lat., Simul flare sorbereque haud facile
Est: ego hic esse et illic simul, haud potui.] — Plautus

Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono, Tin noted in the journal he was sporadically keeping then. Every cloud has a silver lining. — Margaret Atwood

Death approaches, which is always impending like the stone over Tantalus: then comes superstition with which he who is imbued can never have peace of mind.
[Lat., Accedit etiam mors, quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendit: tum superstitio, qua qui est imbutus quietus esse numquam potest.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? - "Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The — Viktor E. Frankl

To be in the mind and to be known are the same thing: in this domain esse est percipi. — Zeno Vendler

Johnette Foltz had hold of the Roy fellow's coat now with both hands and was trying to pull the fellow off, Keds scrabbling for purchase on the smooth parquet, saying 'Yo Roy T. man, easy there Dude, Man, Esse, Bro, Posse, Crew, Homes, Jim, Brother, he's just new is all'; but by this time Erdedy had both arms around the guy's neck and was hugging him with such vigor Kate Gompert later told Joelle van Dyne it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him. — David Foster Wallace

Esse quam videri - "To be, rather than to seem (to be) — Marcus Tullius Cicero

In laboring to be concise, I become obscure.
[Lat., Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.] — Horace

I do not wish to die: but I care not if I were dead.
[Lat., Emori nolo: sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.
[Lat., Vulgo dicitur multos modios salis simul edendos esse, ut amicitia munus expletum sit.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Let me moderate our sorrows. The grief of a man should not exceed proper bounds, but be in proportion to the blow he has received.
[Lat., Ponamus nimios gemitus: flagrantior aequo
Non debet dolor esse viri, nec vulnere major.] — Juvenal

Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness
pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like
have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject ... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world. — Zeno Vendler

No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind.
[Lat., Nemo doctus unquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy (beatum esse velle), our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires. — Hannah Arendt

Indeed, the most intense feeling we know of, intense to the point of blotting out all other experiences, namely, the experience of great bodily pain, is at the same time the most private and least communicable of all. Not only is it perhaps the only experience which we are unable to transform into a shape fit for public appearance, it actually deprives us of our feeling for reality to such an extent that we can forget it more quickly and easily than anything else. There seems to be no bridge from the most radical subjectivity, in which I am no longer "recognizable," to the outer world of life.42 Pain, in other words, truly a borderline experience between life as "being among men" (inter homines esse) and death, is so subjective and removed from the world of things and men that it cannot assume an appearance at all.43 — Hannah Arendt

Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.
If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. — Horace

Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest. (Let no man belong to another that can belong to himself.) — Paracelsus

In opposition to the absolutely and directly false Heideggerian theses attributing to Aquinas an onto-theo-logical metaphysics of Being, Aquinas's actual and genuine conception of God is articulated in the famous formulation according to which God is ipsum esse per se subsistens, Being itself subsisting through itself.

God is not a being (ens,) among other beings, thus not anything like the highest, first, or maximal being.

(p. 43) — Lorenz B. Puntel

A good disposition I far prefer to gold; for gold is the gift of fortune; goodness of disposition is the gift of nature. I prefer much rather to be called good than fortunate.
[Lat., Bono ingenio me esse ornatam, quam auto multo mavolo.
Aurum fortuna invenitur, natura ingenium donum.
Bonam ego, quam beatam me esse nimio dici mavolo. — Plautus

It is a confession that we do not have such a prodigious head as is required to answer the question what is happening, that we cannot get on top of what is happening, that we are stuck in the middle of it, in medias res, inter-esse, amazing and bewildered. We cannot soar over what is happening with philosophy's eagle-wings. What's happening has clipped our wings. — John D. Caputo

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

He who would eat the kernel, must crack the shell.
[Lat., Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem.] — Plautus

I know that we women are all justly accounted praters; they say in the present day that there never was in any age such a wonder to be found as a dumb woman.
[Lat., Nam multum loquaces merito omnes habemus,
Nec mutam profecto repertam ullam esse
Hodie dicunt mulierem ullo in seculo.] — Plautus