Andre Comte-Sponville famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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

#Wise #Simple #Men
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

#Humility #Animal #Thinking
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

#Simple #Thinking #Rose
All fear is imaginary, reality is its antidote.
-- Andre Comte-Sponville

#Life #Reality #Antidote
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

#Shadow #Vanishing #Fragility
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

#Children #Mistake #Heart

I love it when the Bible gives Emily Post-like tips that are both wise and easy to follow.
Walking is the favorite sport of the good and wise.
Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me.
To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self. By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box.
I cannot understand how any man or woman can believe in the Lord's coming and not be a missionary, or at least committed to the work of missions with every power of his being.
No one man is superior to the game.
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
A devotee should be fixed in the conclusion that, the spiritual master cannot be subject to criticism and should never be considered equal to a common man.
The soul of the slave, the soul of the "little man," is as dear to me as the soul of the great.

Andre Comte-Sponville famous quotes

You may also like: