Due to spam and off-topic content, these forums are being phased out and replaced with new great books forums. Please join us! Ahoy fellow book lovers!

The former post was removed as it violated our user agreement, or it did not add to the "Great Books" conversation in a constructive manner.

The new John Locke Forum may be found at http://killdevilhill.com/lockechat/wwwboard.html .

To foster quality discussion forums, from now on only registered members may post. Spam will not be tolerated. If you would like to help moderate, please contact "jolly roger ship @ yahoo . com".

To post please register at http://jollyrogerwest.com.

We prefer deep reflections on Philosophy, Shakespearean Sonnets, and tender musings along the lines of:

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. --Albert Einstein

CI

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,
'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd'?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.
  Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
  To make him seem long hence as he shows now.
 	--William Shakespeare

It is our continuing goal to foster the world's greatest converstation.

In the future, please register and make all posts to http://jollyrogerwest.com,

and/or join the forums at Great Books & Philosophy Forums @ jollyroger.com/greatbooksforums.

Founding Fathers Quotes Dr. Franklin, looking towards the president's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of this session and the vicissitude of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun. --Anonymous anecdote from the Constitutional Convention

All The Best,

William Einstein Shakespeare :)

CXX

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
  But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
  Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
 	--William Shakespeare