Sponville Quotes & Sayings

Pure happiness and peace are at their peak when your body is in harmony with itself. — Asa Don Brown

Kant provides a more helpful answer. For him, these first semblances of virtue can be explained in terms of discipline, in other words, as a product of external constraint: what the child cannot do on his own because he has no instinct for it "others have to do ... for him," and in this way "one generation educates the next. — Andre Comte-Sponville

Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human. — Andre Comte-Sponville

The simple person lives the way he breathes, with no more effort or glory, with no more affectation and without shame Simplicity is freedom, buoyancy, transparency. As simple as the air, as free as the air The simple person does not take himself too seriously or too tragicallyHe has nothing to prove, since he has no appearances to keep up, and nothing to seek, since everything is before him. What is more simple than simplicity? What is lighter? It is the virtue of wise men and the wisdom of saints. — Andre Comte-Sponville

The difference between people is that we are all different. If we were the same we would be boring, dull, not that fun. We need to be different if we weren't what type of world would we have? — Lindsey Johnson

With time, fashion has become part of my DNA. — Roberto Cavalli

Hands behind his head. He took another deep breath. The whore — Jane Smiley

No, what worries me, I readily admit, is everything (that is to say, anything and everything) - everything, that is, except the All, which I find soothing. — Andre Comte-Sponville

A sign above the sink said "Non-potable." I couldn't imagine anyone drinking out of a sink in such a nasty place, but all signs are there for a reason, usually because someone has tried it. Don't use a hair dryer in the bathtub, don't stick forks in the toaster, and don't drink the water in a Kuwaiti latrine cube. — Yancy Caruthers

According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy. — Matthieu Ricard

Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything. How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility? — Andre Comte-Sponville

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy. — Carroll Quigley

The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside. — Hector Hugh Munro

Everything is complex and everything is simple. The rose has no why attached to it, it blooms because it blooms, how no thought of itself, or desire to be seen. What could be more complicated than a rose for someone who wants to understand it? What could be simpler for someone who wants nothing? The complexity of thinking, the simplicity of beholding. — Andre Comte-Sponville

So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that's coming when Jesus arrives. Don't lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn't know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, I am holy; you be holy. — Eugene H. Peterson

To a child who dies, and to the parents of this child, will you speak, if religion consoles them, in praise of atheism? That one does not mistake: that, to my mind, does not prove anything against atheism and much against religion. "The heart of a heartless world, said Marx, the soul of soulless conditions." It is misery that makes religion, and it is why this one is miserable. Who would prohibit opium to a dying man? And what are we, out of oblivion or entertainment, anything else but dying? — Andre Comte-Sponville

I'm not going to say I'll never rock with a band, because I'm too much of a fan of the aesthetic of a great band. But a girl group? Not again. — Dawn Angelique

It is better to be too honest to be polite than to be too polite to be honest! — Andre Comte-Sponville

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically. — Mao Zedong

we are all each other's teacher. — Arjia Rinpoche

Freedom of thought is the only good that is perhaps more precious than peace, for the simple reason that, without it, peace would merely be another name of servitude. — Andre Comte-Sponville

All fear is imaginary, reality is its antidote. — Andre Comte-Sponville

Don't say bad words; don't interrupt people; don't shove; don't steal; don't lie. To the child, all these prohibitions appear identical ("It's not nice"). The distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic will come only later, and gradually. Politeness thus precedes morality, or rather, morality at first is nothing more than politeness: a compliance with usage and its established rules, with the normative play of appearances - a compliance with the world and the ways of the world. — Andre Comte-Sponville