The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
Rene DescartesRead
Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
Interpretation
Traveling allows us to connect with people and ideas from different times and places.
Descartes suggests that through travel, we engage with a rich tapestry of human experience that transcends our own era. By visiting historical sites or cultures, we gain insights and perspectives from past societies, enabling us to understand the continuity and evolution of thought throughout history.
In practice
During a lecture on history, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of experiential learning.
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, be reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.
Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
Before examining this more carefully and investigating its consequences, I want to dwell for a moment in the contemplation of God, to ponder His attributes in me, to see, admire, and adore the beauty of His boundless light, insofar as my clouded insight allows. Believing that the supreme happiness of the other life consists wholly of the contemplation of divine greatness, I now find that through less perfect contemplation of the same sort I can gain the greatest joy available in this life.
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life.
Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, _x000D_ your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.
There really is no such thing as a sick child; there are children who happen to be sick. Think about it, and you will understand the magic of the Camps
Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective.
Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.
Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.
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