Superficially, it might be said that the function of the kidneys is to make urine; but in a more considered view one can say that the kidneys make the stuff of philosophy itself.
You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation.
Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?
Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.
The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.
The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him.
Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.
Even a fool may be wise after the event.
Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.
Three thousand years have not changed the human condition in this respect; we are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, Homer will be read as its truest interpreter.
I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then I will swim.
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism.
And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too. For in my day I have had many bitter and painful experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more.
For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.
But they could neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be far from father or mother, he does not care about it.
Of the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human heart.
The creation of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for the most part, crated far out of the reach of observation.
The heart in his rugged chest was pounding, torn.
Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen? Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart.