

Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent o itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents.



Perception is based, to a very large extent, on conceptual models - which are always inadequate, often incomplete and sometimes profoundly wrong. This complex situation arose because signals from the environment itself can be inadequate. The sort of information we need is not always available. And so, knowledge from the past, mixed up with assumptions about that knowledge which may be more or less appropriate, are used to augment information provided by the senses. Which means that our perception of any situation depends only partly on sensory signals being received at that time. And it is only a very short step from there, to perception which occurs in the absence of all immediate signals and has to be labeled “extrasensory”.

It is remarkable that great affectation and great absence of it (unconsciousness) are at first sight very similar; they are both apt to produce singularity.

Peace is more than simply the absence of aggression and war. Peace transcends the end of a conflict or a statement of policy. While we may force the outward appearance of peace upon a people or a nation, it is the underlying thinking that must change to create a true and lasting peace.

In youth the absence of pleasure is pain; in old age the absence of pain is pleasure.

Could the mind have an existence entirely independent of the central nervous system?... Scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created?... Imagine the implications of the notion that quanta of conscious energy could exist independently in the Universe, able to enter from anywhere, at any time.

Persecution always acts as a gel for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine that they are God’s chosen.

God’ absence is an illusion.

Anarchism is [not] synonymous with chaos. Translated from the Greek, anarchism means the absence of rulers, or orders – not of rules or order. Order emanates naturally from the free cooperation of persons in a community.

The secret of life is balance, and the absence of balance is life’s destruction.

Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice.


Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.

Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as Friends do the Seas; they live in one another still.



Absence lessens moderate passions, it is more on account of their weakness than our strength.