The "Flosofee" plant.  From the University of Southern California's 1910 yearbook.

A tiny volume with a hundred recipes for the gourmet's table.  From Nebelspalter, 1935.

From Watson's Magazine, 1906.

From The Gateway, 1978.

Cheeky philosophy -- the Temple of Feelosofee.  From West Virginia Conference Seminary's 1904 yearbook.

The text here says that majoring in philosophy creates mystic thinkers but seldom leads to employment.  From the University of North Carolina at Asheville's 1977 yearbook.

From North Central's 1968 yearbook.

"The really carefully guarded secret of the priests of all the religions, which they will never voluntarily relinquish to the world, is that priests are not needed, nor what priests know or what initiates do or what the devout believe—practices and sacraments, anything. The truth is that God inhabits without limit; wherever the real is or the actual does, He is it. Special knowledge of how to get in touch with him is that same knowledge which carries the bee home to its hive each night; who sells that knowledge to the bee? If we have no money, if we can't read or be wise, are we abandoned? Does He abandon the lowly insects because they are virtually no more than reflex machines? Just as truth cannot really be suppressed, at least not forever, it neither can be horded. We are taught day and night, as all living entities are: ceaselessly. God did not begin to govern and inform the cosmos when writing and money were invented."

"Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb—that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully ... which only reinforces that particular Lie.  I imagine that if Sweet Jesus is listening to me He is becoming very angry now, but if He follows his own philisophy He will fold his hands, look tragically toward heaven, and do nothing."

"We are going to have to deal with propositions which are simultaneously both true and false; my corollary is that mutually contrary propositions may be equally true."

—Philip K. Dick, Exegesis

"The imaginary horse isn't real, but your idea of it is real" (Marietta McCarty, Little Big Minds, 2006).  Photo as scanned by the Costică Acsinte Archive.

"A tear-off calendar has just as much time as a perpetual calendar, although the time in question is not the same." —Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus

From Mental Philosophy by Thomas Wirgman, 1838.

You've heard that "a horse is a horse, of course, of course."  But here's our explanation of why a racehorse is less like a workhorse than a workhorse is like an ox (as per Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus).  The science of ethology doesn't define a body by species or genus but rather counts affects.  Hence, workhorses and oxen are similar in that they both pull heavy burdens, are dirty, are tethered, move slowly, work long days, and are crucial to farm production.  A racehorse is none of those things: it is unburdened, clean, untethered, can gallop, works short days on the track and not the field, is well-groomed, and wins trophies.  How does all this relate to being one's own cat?  A cat-person is more like a Persian cat than an indoor cat is like an alley cat.  For further explanation, easy tips, and immediate results, see How To Be Your Own Cat.  (And yes, we really did go to all this trouble to justify a tie-in to our book.  That's how important it all is.)

Martin Buber's I and Thou came after Amelia E. Barr's I, Thou, and the Other One.  No wonder David Mevorach Seidenberg has said that "Buber is lacking something" (Kabbalah and Ecology, 2015).

On the magical quality of philosophical phrases: "They have something, a sort of magic — I don't know what — that makes like rich and exciting to me.  . . . I think we're thrilled by the weight of history that lies behind each one of these phrases.  It isn't just the world itself, or just its immediate meaning.  It's a long, trailing margin of human sensations, life by life, century by century, that gives us this peculiar thrill.  . . .  I know they're absurd, these phrases . . . Words like 'pluralism' and 'dualism' and 'monism.'  But what they make me think of is just a particular class of vague, delicious, physical sensations!  And it's the idea of there having been feelings like these, in far-off, long-buried human nerves, that pleases.  . . .  It makes life seem so thick and rich and complicated."  —John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent