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Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

F. H. Bradley

There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.
F. H. BRADLEY

Interest Person Shock
It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.
F. H. BRADLEY

Goodness Himself Learning Man Reputation Understand World
Reason teaches us that what is good is good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all.
F. H. BRADLEY

Goodness Reason Teaching
Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false.
F. H. BRADLEY

Fake Philosophy Truth
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
F. H. BRADLEY

Repeat Silence True Willing
Another occupation might have been better.
F. H. BRADLEY

Better Choice Job Occupation
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
F. H. BRADLEY

Admire Happiness Secret
There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.
F. H. BRADLEY

Finding Naked Philosophy Truth
Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.
F. H. BRADLEY

Arrival Children Knowledge Marriage Wife
His mind is so open – so open that ideas simply pass through it.
F. H. BRADLEY

Ideas Mindset Open Simplicity
But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.
F. H. BRADLEY

Desire Oneself
The cost of a thing is what I call life which has to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
F. H. BRADLEY

Cost exchange Myself Price Run
Few people would not be the worse for complete sincerity.
F. H. BRADLEY

People Sincere Worst
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
F. H. BRADLEY

Children Daughter Herself Mom Play
An aphorism is true where it has fixed the impression of a genuine experience.
F. H. BRADLEY

Experience Fix Genuine Impression True
The Self has turned out to mean so many things, to mean them so ambiguously, and to be so wavering in its application, that we do not feel encouraged.
F. H. BRADLEY

Application Encouragement Feeling
The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.
F. H. BRADLEY

Himself Human Hunter Mindset Nature Water
One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.
F. H. BRADLEY

Answer Brain Oneself Suicide
The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.
F. H. BRADLEY

Best Evil Necessary Possible World
The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.
F. H. BRADLEY

Blow Fly Force Resistance Temptation
My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside… the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.
F. H. BRADLEY

Feeling Privacy Sensation Soul
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.
F. H. BRADLEY

Bad Believe Finding Instinct Physics Reason
The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts about their neighbors.
F. H. BRADLEY

Neighbor Person Thinking
The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care.
F. H. BRADLEY

Care Fear Man
The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.
F. H. BRADLEY

Death Enemy Knowledge Virtue
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
F. H. BRADLEY

Blood Experience Heart Live Ourselves Writing
I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced.
F. H. BRADLEY

Experience Myself

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

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Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

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