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There are many things which can be separated by a mental process, though they cannot be separated in fact.
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“There are many things which can be separated by a mental process, though they cannot be separated in fact.”

Boethius

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Source
How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods
Date
c. 520s
Meaning

Meaning of “There are many things which can be separated…”

Boethius distinguishes conceptual analysis from physical separation: the mind can consider a feature on its own even when the thing and that feature cannot actually be pulled apart in reality.

Source context

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How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods (De Hebdomadibus), H. F. Stewart / E. K. Rand 1918 edition, Project Gutenberg #13316. The sentence introduces a metaphysical method by distinguishing mental abstraction from actual separation.

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DeepMindPhilosophyThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionUnderstandingKnowledgePerception
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The world is my idea.
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“The world is my idea.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) · 1818
Meaning & context

Schopenhauer opens his system by arguing that the experienced world is always presented in relation to a knowing subject, making perception and consciousness conditions of the world as it is known.

Source details

The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, First Book, §1, Haldane and Kemp translation, Project Gutenberg #38427. “Idea” translates Vorstellung in this historical philosophical vocabulary and should not be read as the everyday sense of a passing thought.

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All men by nature desire to know.
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“All men by nature desire to know.”

Aristotle · Metaphysics · c. 350 BCE
Meaning & context

Aristotle treats the desire for knowledge as a basic human tendency, giving curiosity a foundational place in the movement from perception toward understanding.

Source details

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter I, W. D. Ross translation (1908), validated Wikisource scan leaf 21. 'All men by nature desire to know' opens the work before the discussion of sensation, memory, experience, art and knowledge. This remains ancient philosophy mediated by translation, not a modern empirical finding about cognition.

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Diversity repels; likeness attracts.
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“Diversity repels; likeness attracts.”

Boethius · How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods · c. 520s
Meaning & context

The concise axiom is one premise in Boethius’s metaphysical argument: things are described as tending toward what is like them, not as a modern empirical rule about human attraction or relationships.

Source details

How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods (De Hebdomadibus), preliminary proposition IX, H. F. Stewart / E. K. Rand 1918 edition, Project Gutenberg #13316. Kept as a historical metaphysical premise, not social-science evidence.

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Hence more than half their disputes are at bottom verbal.
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“Hence more than half their disputes are at bottom verbal.”

George Henry Lewes · The Physical Basis of Mind · 1877
Meaning & context

Lewes argues that many apparent disagreements persist because people use the same terms with different meanings, making precision of language part of clearer reasoning.

Source details

The Physical Basis of Mind, chapter on consciousness and unconsciousness; Project Gutenberg #60212. Lewes is discussing ambiguity of scientific terms, so the line supports communication and conceptual clarity rather than a claim that all disputes are merely verbal.

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Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
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“Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Essays of Schopenhauer — On Books and Reading · 1851
Meaning & context

Reading supplies another mind’s thought, but Schopenhauer warns that consuming ideas should not replace the work of forming one’s own connected judgment.

Source details

Essay “On Books and Reading,” in a public-domain English collection of Schopenhauer’s essays.

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We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer.
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“We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · The Joyful Wisdom · 1910
Meaning & context

The aphorism suggests that inquiry is limited by the conceptual capacities of the person asking, making intellectual growth partly a matter of becoming able to formulate and recognize better questions.

Source details

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 196; Thomas Common translation.

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