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8 October 2022
as art advances, reason and virtue will finally become the universal watchword

8 October 2022
I live among wise and well-mannered citizens, that is to say, among those who are skilled at appearing so

8 October 2022
physicians, who believe they have been very helpful to their patient when they give his malady a name

8 October 2022
the frailties of the head, from its paralysis in imbecility to its raptures in madness; but in order to recognize these loathsome maladies in their gradual origination, I find it first necessary to elucidate their milder degrees from idiocy to foolishness, because these properties are more widespread in civil relations and lead nonetheless to the former ones.

8 October 2022
The practical judgment concerning matters, such as the farmer, the artist, or the seafarer, etc., need it, is very different from judgment one possesses about the techniques with which human beings deal with one another. The latter is not so much understanding as craftiness, and the lovable lack of this highly praised capacity is called simplicity.

8 October 2022
The drives of human nature, which are called passions when they are of a high degree, are the moving forces of the will

8 October 2022
If a passion is especially powerful, the capacity of the understanding is of little help against it

8 October 2022
The insensitive person is safe from folly through his stupidity; to ordinary eyes, however, he has the mien of a wise person.

8 October 2022
One has no cause at all to believe that in the state of being awake our mind follows other laws than in sleep.

8 October 2022
For it would be in vain to set rational arguments against a sensation or that representa- tion which resembles the latter in strength, since the senses provide a far greater conviction regarding actual things than an inference of reason

8 October 2022
after waking up we lie in an idle and gentle distraction

8 October 2022
there is a kind of fantastic mania that is attributed to someone only because the degree of the feeling through which he is affected by certain objects is judged to be excessive for the moderate, healthy head.

8 October 2022
enthusiasm, [...] nothing great has ever been accomplished in the world without it.

8 October 2022
Up to this point the power of the understanding is not actually attacked in the disturbed head, at least it is not necessary that it be; for the mistake actually resides only in the concepts. Provided one accepts the reversed sensation as true, the judgments themselves can be quite correct, even extraordinarily reasonable.

8 October 2022
the amorous passion flatters itself or is tormented with many strange interpretations that resemble dementia.

8 October 2022
I have designated the frailties of the power of cognition maladies of the head, just as one calls the corruption of the will a malady of the heart.

8 October 2022
the philosopher, who could prescribe the diet of the mind

8 October 2022
the great, but always futile cure of foolishness.