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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.

Rene Descartes

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Rene Descartes
Age: 53 †
Born: 1596
Born: March 31
Died: 1650
Died: February 11
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Nothing comes out of nothing.
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... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.
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Just as we believe by faith that the greatest happiness of the next life consists simply in the contemplation of this divine majesty, likewise we experience that we derive the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life from the same contemplation, even though it is much less perfect.
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The nature of matter, or body considered in general, consists not in its being something which is hard or heavy or coloured, or which affects the senses in any way, but simply in its being something which is extended in length, breadth and depth.
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Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.
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There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts.
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Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
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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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If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
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Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
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Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.
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Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
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God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.
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So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.
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There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
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I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
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He lives well who is well hidden.
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Reason is nothing without imagination.
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With me, everything turns into mathematics.
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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.
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