“He(E.A.Poe) cannot be blamed for not saying clearly what beauty is. The greatest philosophers in the world acknowledge in the end that the best one can do is to recognize it when it is there.” — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“The three greatest metaphysicians who ever existed - Plato, Aristotle and St.Thomas Aquinas - had no system in the idealistic sense of the word. Their ambition was not to achieve philosophy once and for all, but to maintain it and… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought. — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“Modern man, brought up on Kantian idealism, regards nature as being no more than an outcome of the laws of the mind. Losing all… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“The Middle Ages were long preoccupied with the nature of the concept, or of the notion which the intellect abstracts from the object; but… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy… — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
Radiance belongs to being considered precisely as beautiful: it is, in being, that which catches the eye, or the ear, or the mind, and… — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“When man subverted order he did a great deal more than merely fall away from the rationality of his nature, diminish his own humanity,… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“Just as it is by His goodness that God gives being to beings, so also it is by His goodness that He makes causes… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement… — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“As long as one makes some kind of conscious state, whether a “passive sensation” or an “apprehended”, come before reality, one will remain more… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys… — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
If our previous analyses are correct, they all point to the same conclusion, that metaphysical adventures are doomed to fail when their authors substitute… — Etienne Gilson Copy Share Image
“But if one decides to start with Descartes and finish with Aristotle, and to employ an idealist method while shamelessly making use of a… — Étienne Gilson Copy Share Image
