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Instead I ought to be grateful to Him who never owed me anything for having been so generous to me, rather than think that He deprived me of those things or has taken away from me whatever He did not give me.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
Astronomer
Correspondent
Mathematician
Mechanical Automaton Engineer
Military Personnel
Music Theorist
Musicologist
Philosopher
Physicist
La Haye en Touraine
Descartes
Cartesius
Renatus Cartesius
Giving
Instead
Things
Ought
Never
Taken
Think
Whatever
Thinking
Rather
Owed
Away
Deprived
Give
Generous
Anything
Grateful

More quotes by Rene Descartes

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Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.
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I experienced in myself a certain capacity for judging which I have doubtless received from God, like all the other things that I possess and as He could not desire to deceive me, it is clear that He has not given me a faculty that will lead me to err if I use it aright.
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There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
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If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.
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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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This result could have been achieved either by his [God] endowing my intellect with a clear and distinct perception of everything about which I would ever deliberate, or simply by impressing the following rule so firmly upon my memory that I could never forget it: I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand.
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I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.
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In God there is an infinitude of things which I cannot comprehend, nor possibly even reach in any way by thought for it is the nature of the infinite that my nature, which is finite and limited, should not comprehend it.
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Divide each difficulty at hand into as many pieces as possible and as could be required to better solve them.
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In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
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For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance
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Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
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A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
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Wonder is the first of all the passions.
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We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.
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The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
Rene Descartes
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And I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy uninterrupted leisure than to any who might offer me the most honourable positions in the world.
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On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am a thinking, non-extended thing and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far a this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And, accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and exist without it.
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Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
Rene Descartes