F. H. Bradley - Appearance and Reality (1893)

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Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

F. H. Bradley

Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil."

F. H. Bradley

Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.

F. H. Bradley

When the sense of mystery and enchantment no longer draws the mind to wander aimlessly and to love it knows not what; when, in short, twilight has no charm - then metaphysics will be worthless.

F. H. Bradley

For Nature to the common man is not the Nature of the physicist; and the physicist himself, outside his science, still habitually views the world as what he must believe it cannot be.

F. H. Bradley

We may agree, perhaps, to understand by Metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole.

F. H. Bradley

Metaphysical knowledge... may be possible theoretically, and even actual, if you please, to a certain degree; but, for all that, it is practically no knowledge worth the name.

F. H. Bradley