Our Notion Of Symmetry Is

All Who Say The Same Things Do Not Possess Them In The Same Manner; And Hence The Incomparable Author Of The Art Of Conversation Pauses With So Much Care To Make It Understood That We Must Not Judge Of The Capacity Of A Man By The Excellence Of A Happy Remark That We Heard Him Make. Let Us Penetrate, Says He, The Mind From Which It Proceeds. It Will Oftenest Be Seen That He Will Be Made To Disavow It On The Spot, And Will Be Drawn Very Far From This Better Thought In Which He Does Not Believe, To Plunge Himself Into Another, Quite Base And Ridiculous.

We Must Learn Our Limits. We Are All Something, But None Of Us Are Everything.

When I See The Blind And Wretched State Of Men, When I Survey The Whole Universe In Its Deadness, And Man Left To Himself With No Light, As Though Lost In This Corner Of The Universe Without Knowing Who Put Him There, What He Has To Do, Or What Will Become Of Him When He Dies, Incapable Of Knowing Anything, I Am Moved To Terror, Like A Man Transported In His Sleep To Some Terrifying Desert Island, Who Wakes Up Quite Lost, With No Means Of Escape. Then I Marvel That So Wretched A State Does Not Drive People To Despair.

Man Is Full Of Desires: He Loves Only Those Who Can Satisfy Them All. "this Man Is A Good Mathematician," Someone Will Say. But I Have No Concern For Mathematics; He Would Take Me For A Proposition. "that One Is A Good Soldier." He Would Take Me For A Besieged Town. I Need, That Is To Say, A Decent Man Who Can Accommodate Himself To All My Desires In A General Sort Of Way.

Any Unity Which Doesn't Have Its Origin In The Multitudes Is Tyranny.