Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it. It is usually the central thing around which their lives are built, and I suppose if they did not live most of their lives in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on.

Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.

Formality Thus the absence of all mention of particular things or properties in logic or pure mathematics is a necessary result of the fact that this study is, as we say, "purely formal".