The habit of viewing life as a whole is an essential part both of wisdom and of true morality, and is one of the things which ought to be encouraged in education. Consistent purpose is not enough to make life happy, but it is an almost indispensable condition of a happy life. And consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 14 “Work” (1930)
(Source)
A cat may looke on a King.
John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbs, Part 2, ch. 5 (1546)
(Source)
Revised spelling from the 1874 edition. Original editions had it, "A cat maie looke on a kyng." This is the earliest text found with this recorded as an English proverb.
Thomas Fuller included the phrase ("A Cat may look upon a King") in his Gnomologia, # 35 (1732).
For more information on this phrase and its history, see: meaning and origin of the phrase ‘a cat may look at a king’ – word histories.
Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.
[Les hommes qui ont une foi excessive dans leurs théories ou dans leurs idées sont non-seulement mal disposés pour faire des découvertes, mais ils font aussi de très-mauvaises observations. Ils observent nécessairement avec une idée préconçue, et quand ils ont institué une expérience, ils ne veulent voir dans ses résultats qu’une confirmation de leur théorie. Ils défigurent ainsi l’observation et négligent souvent des faits très-importants, parce qu’ils ne concourent pas à leur but.]
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale], ch. 3 (1865) [tr. Greene (1957)]
(Source)
CALVIN: As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.
IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Imagination,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
(Source)
Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1885-08-29).
The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
On Revolution, ch. 4, sec. 1 (1963)
(Source)
“Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?”
“Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens.”A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 8 “Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition” (1926)
(Source)
Long ago, I made up my mind that, when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1942-01-14), “My Day”
(Source)
MEDEA: Oh, what an evil power love has in people’s lives!
CREON: That would depend on circumstances, I imagine.
[ΜΉΔΕΙΑ: Φεῦ φεῦ, βροτοῖς ἔρωτες ὡς κακὸν μέγα.
ΚΡΈΩΝ: ὅπως ἄν, οἶμαι, καὶ παραστῶσιν τύχαι.]
Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 330ff (431 BC) [tr. Vellacott (1963)]
(Source)
After Creon has spoken of how both love of his country and his children requires him to banish Medea. She has already faced Jason's love gone wrong as well, and her reaction to that will give end up in bad circumstances to all involved.
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:MEDEA: To Mortals what a dreadful scourge is love!
CREON: As Fortune dictates, Love becomes, I ween,
Either a curse or blessing.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]MEDEA: Alas, what fatal ills love works to man!
CREON: That is, I ween, as fortune guides th' event.
[tr. Potter (1814)]MEDEA: Ah me! How great an ill to man is love!
CREON: That is, I doubt, as fortune waits on it.
[tr. Webster (1868)]MEDEA: Ah me! ah me! to mortal man how dread a scourge is love!
CREON: That, I deem, is according to the turn our fortunes take.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]MEDEA: Alas! alas! how great an ill is love to man!
CREON: That is, I think, as fortune also shall attend it.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]MEDEA: Alas! to mortals what a curse is love!
KREON: Blessing or curse, I trow, as fortune falls.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]MEDEA: O Loves of man, what curse is on your wings!
CREON: Blessing or curse, 'tis as their chances flow.
[tr. Murray (1906)]MEDEA: Oh what an evil to men is passionate love!
CREON: That would depend on the luck that goes along with it.
[tr. Warner (1944)]MEDEA: Ah! What an evil thing men’s loves are!
CREON: It all depends, I suppose, on how things turn out.
[tr. Podlecki (1989)]MEDEA: Oh, what a bane is love to mortals.
CREON: I fancy that depends on the circumstances.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]MEDEA: Ah, the loves of mortal men! What a boundless source of woe!<
CREON: That would depend, I imagine, on the circumstances of each case.
[tr. Davie (1996)]MEDEA: Oh! What a dreadful thing love is!
CREON: It depends ...
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]MEDEA: Feu, feu [Aah, aah] mortal affections, how great an affliction they are!
CREON: That, I think, depends on the circumstances.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]MEDEA:Alas,
love’s a miserable thing for mortal men.
CREON: I think events determine if that’s true.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]MEDEA: Oh, how great an evil love is to mankind.
CREON: No, I am sure that depends on the circumstances.
[tr. Ewans (2022)]MEDEA: Ah me! Ah me! To mortals how great an evil [kakon] is love!
CREON: That, I suppose, is according to the turn our fortunes take.
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
[εὐλογεῖτε τοὺς διώκοντας [ὑμᾶς], εὐλογεῖτε καὶ μὴ καταρᾶσθε.]
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Romans 12: 14 [NRSV (2021 ed.)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
[KJV (1611)]Bless those who persecute you: never curse them, bless them.
[JB (1966)]Bless your persecutors; never curse them, bless them.
[NJB (1985)]Ask God to bless those who persecute you -- yes, ask him to bless, not to curse.
[GNT (1992 ed.)]Bless people who harass you -- bless and don’t curse them.
[CEB (2011)]
A free nation may have a deliverer; a nation enslaved can have only another oppressor. For whoever is able to dethrone an absolute prince has a power sufficient to become absolute himself.
[Une nation libre peut avoir un libérateur; une nation subjuguée ne peut avoir qu’un autre oppresseur. Car tout homme qui a assez de force pour chasser celui qui est déja le maître absolu dans un état, en a assez pour le devenir lui-même.]
Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 19, ch. 27 (1748) [tr. Nugent (1750)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:A free nation can have a liberator; a subjugated nation can only have another oppressor. For any man who has enough strength to drive out the one who is already the absolute master in a state has enough to become one himself.
[tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]A free nation can have a liberator; a subjugated nation can only have another oppressor. For any man who has enough force to drive out him who is already the absolute master in a state has enough to become the master himself.
[tr. Stewart (2018)]
We know that war depresses public dialogue and debate, enlarges executive power, diminishes citizens’ rights, encourages governmental secrecy and deception, and deforms the outlines of human decency. Thus a government making war for the sake of peace, freedom, and human dignity — as it will never cease to declare — will curtail the rights of prisoners, resort to torture, deny its errors, exaggerate its virtues, demonize the enemy, and (as is inevitable in modern war) kill many innocent people, including, of course, many children.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
(Source)
This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).
There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
Do you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? Who refuses to leave you when you are impoverished and stretches its resources to give a hearty sustenance and cheer? Who warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer? Yet who also is capable of doing honor to your richest table and impressing your most demanding guests? […]
Soup does its loyal best, no matter what undignified conditions are imposed upon it. But soup knows the difference. Soup is sensitive. You don’t catch steak hanging around when you’re poor and sick, do you? Soup deserves to be treated well.Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Part 3 “Basic Civilization,” “Table Manners” (1983)
(Source)
Included in the 2005 edition.
OSRIC: A hit, a very palpable hit.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 5, sc. 2, l. 304 (5.2.304) (c. 1600)
(Source)
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.
It is generally pride rather than lack of intelligence which prompts men to dispute so obstinately generally accepted opinions; they find all the front seats taken on the popular side, and do not wish to sit behind.
[C’est plus souvent par orgueil que par défaut de lumières qu’on s’oppose avec tant d’opiniâtreté aux opinions les plus suivies: on trouve les premières places prises dans le bon parti, et on ne veut point des dernières.]
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶234 (1665-1678) [tr. Stevens (1939)]
(Source)
This passage first appeared in the 5th (1678) edition. Earlier English translations do not include it.
See also Gracián (1647).
In the manuscript version, "C'est ... d’opiniâtreté" is given as: "C’est par orgueil qu’on s’oppose avec tant d’opiniâtreté … [It is out of pride that they oppose with such stubbornness ...]," removing the comment about lack of understanding / intelligence.
(Source (French)). Other translations:It is more often from pride than from want of intelligence that people oppose with so much obstinacy; the most received opinions. They find the best places taken up in the good party, and do not like to put up with inferior ones.
[ed. Gowens (1851), ¶380]It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.
[tr. Bund/Friswell (1871), ¶234]It is more often our pride than our limited understanding which makes us fly so violently in the face of public opinion. We find the best seats on the correct side already occupied, and we do not care to sit in the rear.
[tr. Heard (1917), ¶377]Pride, rather than a lack of perspicacity, is what usually drives us to oppose with such obstinacy opinions that are generally accepted as correct: though theirs may be the better party, the front benches are already filled, and we certainly do not want to take a back seat.
[tr. FitzGibbon (1957), ¶234]It is oftener through pride than through lack of understanding that we so militantly object to prevailing opinions; we find the front seats already in other hands, and we do not want rear ones.
[tr. Kronenberger (1959), ¶234]Those who obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.
[tr. Tancock (1959), ¶234]It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we so stubbornly oppose ourselves to the most current opinions: we find the first seats already taken on the better side, and do not wish to sit down there last.
[tr. Whichello (2016) ¶234]
Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; and if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
(Source)
When we observe the lives of those whom an ample inheritance has let loose to their own direction, what do we discover that can excite our envy? Their time seems not to pass with much applause from others, or satisfaction to themselves: many squander their exuberance of fortune in luxury and debauchery, and have no other use of money than to inflame their passions, and riot in a wide range of licentiousness; others, less criminal indeed, but surely not much to be praised, lie down to sleep, and rise up to trifle, are employed every morning in finding expedients to rid themselves of the day, chase pleasure through all the places of publick resort, fly from London to Bath, and from Bath to London, without any other reason for changing place, but that they go in quest of company as idle and as vagrant as themselves, always endeavouring to raise some new desire, that they may have something to pursue, to rekindle some hope which they know will be disappointed, changing one amusement for another which a few months will make equally insipid, or sinking into languor and disease for want of something to actuate their bodies or exhilarate their minds.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
(Source)
What would we think of a father, who should give a farm to his children, and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with ferocious beasts, and poisonous reptiles; should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighborhood to breed malaria; should so arrange matters, that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings, and besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity, that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of the plants were deadly; that the reptiles were poisonous; failed to say anything about the earthquakes, and kept the volcano business a profound secret; would we pronounce him angel or fiend?
And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done.
Age is deformed, youth unkinde,
We scorn their bodies, they our minde.Thomas Bastard (1565–1618) English clergyman, epigrammist
Chrestoleros, Book 7, Epigram 9 “De senectute & juventute” (7.9) (1598)
(Source)
Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other’s eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God’s creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1877-02), “On Falling in Love,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 35
(Source)
Collected as "Virginibus Puerisque, Part 3" in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 1 (1881).
I believe that it is better even from the point of view of survival to fight and be conquered than to surrender without fighting.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 6, Such, Such Were the Joys, essay 8 (1953)
(Source)
CALVIN: This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn’t make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists, why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn’t exist, what’s the meaning of all this?
HOBBES: I dunno … isn’t this a religious holiday?
CALVIN: Yeah, but actually, I’ve got the same questions about God.
THE DOCTOR: Now drop your weapons, or I’ll kill him with this deadly jelly baby.
LUGO: Kill him, then.
THE DOCTOR: What?
LUGO: Kill him, then.
THE DOCTOR: I don’t take orders from anyone. [Eats jelly baby] Take me to your leader.
Doctor Who (1963-1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
14×04 “The Face of Evil,” Part 1 (1977-01-01) [w. Chris Boucher]
(Source)
(Source (Video); dialog confirmed)
The sinner sins against himself. The wrong-doer wrongs himself by making himself evil.
[Ὁ ἁμαρτάνων ἑαυτῷ ἁμαρτάνει: ὁ ἀδικῶν ἑαυτὸν ἀδικεῖ, ἑαυτὸν, ἑαυτὸν κακὸν ποιῶν.]
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 9, ch. 4 (9.4) (AD 161-180) [tr. Hutcheson/Chrystal (1902)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:He that sinneth, sinneth unto himself. He that is unjust, hurts himself, in that he makes himself worse than he was before.
[tr. Casaubon (1634)]He that commits a Fault Abroad , is a Trespasser at Home; And he that injures his Neighbour, hurts himself , for to make himself an ill Man is a shrew'd Michief.
[tr. Collier (1701)]He who does wrong, does a wrong to himself. He who is injurious, does evil to himself, by making himself evil.
[tr. Hutcheson/Moor (1742)]He that commits a crime, is guilty of an offence against his own interest, and he that acts unjustly, injures himself: for to make himself a bad man, is an essential injury.
[tr. Graves (1792)]He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.
[tr. Long (1862)]He that commits a fault abroad is a trespasser at home; and he that injures his neighbour, hurts himself, for to make himself an evil man is a great mischief.
[tr. Collier/Zimmern (1887)]He who sins, sins against himself; he who does wrong, wrongs himself, making himself evil.
[tr. Rendall (1898)]He that does wrong, does wrong to himself. The unjust man is unjust to himself, for he makes himself bad.
[tr. Haines (Loeb) (1916)]Whosoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whosoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself evil.
[tr. Farquharson (1944)]The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.
[tr. Staniforth (1964)]Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whosever acts unjustly, acts unjustly toward himself, because he makes himself bad.
[tr. Hard (1997 ed., 2011 ed.)]To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice -- it degrades you.
[tr. Hays (2003)]The sinner sins against himself: the wrongdoer wrongs himself, by making himself morally bad.
[tr. Hammond (2006)]He who acts wrongly harms himself. If a person commits an injustice, he acts badly toward himself, thus making himself bad.
[tr. Needleman/Piazza (2008)]
Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.
Barbara Walters (1929-2022) American broadcast journalist
How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything, ch. 4 (1970)
(Source)
Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 14 “Work” (1930)
(Source)
A Book that is shut, is but a Block.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (compiler), # 23 (1732)
(Source)
Our politicians have truly made a pact with the Devil. One watches them spend more and more of their time and energy grubbing, coaxing, flattering, and whoring for money. Terrified of being cut off from the mother’s milk, they stand like morons in the rising sea of contempt that threatens to drown the whole system. Then they wonder why no one likes them anymore.
Molly Ivins (1944-2007) American writer, political columnist [Mary Tyler Ivins]
Essay (1998-01), “Introduction,” You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You (1998)
(Source)
To sound off with a cheerful “give me liberty or give me death” sort of argument in the face of the unprecedented and inconceivable potential of destruction in nuclear warfare is not even hollow; it is downright ridiculous. Indeed it seems so obvious that it is a very different thing to risk one’s own life for the life and freedom of one’s country and one’s posterity from risking the very existence of the human species for the same purpose that it is difficult not to suspect the defenders of the “better dead than red” or “better death than slavery” slogans of bad faith.
Which of course is not to say the reverse, “better red than dead,” has any more to recommend itself; when an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
As a matter of fact, to the extent that the discussion of the war question today is conducted in these terms, it is easy to detect a mental reservation on both sides. Those who say “better dead than red” actually think: The losses may not be as great as some anticipate, our civilization will survive; while those who say “better red than dead” actually think: Slavery will not be so bad, man will not change his nature, freedom will not vanish from the earth forever. In other words, the bad faith of the discussants lies in that both dodge the preposterous alternative they themselves have proposed; they are not serious.Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
On Revolution, Introduction (1963)
(Source)
Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which Kanga wasn’t listening.
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 8 “Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition” (1926)
(Source)
I do not know Mr. Willkie, but the headline in one of the metropolitan papers yesterday said: “Willkie Aims At Unity, Defense and Recovery.” I’m discouraged. In Heaven’s name, will anyone aim at anything else?
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1940-07-01), “My Day”
(Source)
CREON: A woman of hot temper — and a man the same —
Is a less dangerous enemy than one quiet and clever.[ΚΡΈΩΝ: Γυνὴ γὰρ ὀξύθυμος, ὡς δ᾽ αὔτως ἀνήρ,
ῥᾴων φυλάσσειν ἢ σιωπηλὸς σοφή.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 319ff (431 BC) [tr. Vellacott (1963)]
(Source)
Expressing his mistrust of how reasonably, if tragically, Medea is presenting herself.
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:For 'gainst those
Of hasty tempers with more ease we guard.
Or men or women, than the silent foe
Who acts with prudence.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]A woman, or a man, whose fiery spirit
Flames out with anger, puts us on our guard,
More than the prudent calmness that conceals
Its hate in silence.
[tr. Potter (1814)]For a woman passionate, yea and a man,
Is easier warded than a silent plotter.
[tr. Webster (1868)]For cunning woman, and man likewise, is easier to guard against when quick-tempered than when taciturn.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]For a woman that is quick to anger, and a man likewise, is easier to guard against, than one that is crafty and keeps silence.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]The vehement-hearted woman -- yea, or man --
Is easier watched-for than the silent-cunning.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]A woman quick of wrath, aye, or a man,
Is easier watching than the cold and still.
[tr. Murray (1906)]A sharp-tempered woman, or, for that matter, a man,
Is easier to deal with than the clever type
Who holds her tongue.
[tr. Warner (1944)]A woman, just like a man, who is quick to wrath
Is easier guarded than one wise and silent.
[tr. Podlecki (1989)]A hot-tempered woman -- and a hot-tempered man likewise -- is easier to guard against than a clever woman who keeps her own counsel.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]A woman who is hot-tempered, and likewise a man, is easier to guard against than one who is clever and controls her tongue.
[tr. Davie (1996)]You’re too silent now and whilst it is easy to protect oneself from a hot-headed man or woman, it is impossible to do so when the woman is scheming and silent.
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]For a quick-tempered woman -- the same goes for a man --
is easier to guard against than a silent clever one.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]Passionate people, women as well as men,
are easier to protect oneself against,
than someone clever who keeps silent.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]It is easier to guard against a hot-headed woman, or a man, than against one who is scheming and silent.
[ed. Taplin (2016)]A woman of sharp temper or indeed a man is easier to guard against than one who's clever and stays silent.
[tr. Ewans (2022)]For a woman with a sharp thūmos, and likewise a man, is easier to guard against than a sophē one who is silent.
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies. That means he knows only one class: enemies.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher and poet
(Attributed)
(Source)
This is frequently attributed to Nietzsche, without citation -- a clue that it is a paraphrase of a more complex or nuanced passage. I found only one reference online that mentioned a source -- Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human (1880) -- but a search through multiple translations did not uncover this sentiment.
Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.
[La fortune est toujours pour les gros bataillons]
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696) French aristocrat, woman of letters [Madame de Sévigné, Mme de Sévigné]
Letter (1673-12-22) to Mme. de Grignan [ed. Hoyt and Ward (1896), No. 202]
(Source)
(Source (French), No. 118). Other translations:Fortune generally declares in favor of numerous battalions.
[Source (1811), No. 274]Providence is always on the side of the big battalions.
[Oxford Dict. of Proverbs]
Also attributed to her cousin Roger de Bussy-Rabutin ("God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small").
The phrase had become proverbial by at least the early 19th C. Other variants include:
- God sides with the big battalions.
- God sides with whichever side has the biggest battalions.
We have said that the laws were the particular and precise institutions of a legislator, and manners and customs the institutions of a nation in general. Hence it follows that when these manners and customs are to be changed, it ought not to be done by laws; this would have too much the air of tyranny: it would be better to change them by introducing other manners and other customs.
[Nous avons dit que les loix étoient des institutions particulieres & précises du législateur, & les mœurs & les manieres des institutions de la nation en général. De-là il suit que, lorsque l’on veut changer les mœurs & les manieres, il ne faut pas les changer par les loix ; cela paroîtroit trop tyrannique: il vaut mieux les changer par d’autres mœurs & d’autres manieres.]
Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 19, ch. 14 (1748) [tr. Nugent (1750)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:We have said that the laws were the particular and precise institutions of the legislator and the mores and manners, the instructions of the nation in general. From this it follows that when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the law, as this would appear to be too tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners.
[tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]We have said that laws were particular and precise institutions of the legislator, and the morals and the manners institutions of the nation as a whole. Whence it follows that when you want to change morals and manners, you should not do it by laws, which would appear too tyrannical; it is better to change them with other morals and manners.
[tr. Stewart (2018)]
Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and difficult as that.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
(Misattributed)
Cited by Wikiquote to The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1980), but not found there, nor in The Neurotics Notebook (1965) or The Second Neurotic's Notebook (1966).
The actual source appears to be Michael Leunig (1945-2024), Australian cartoonist, poet, and artist.
Of course no one is so sensitive as you, but try to remember they think they are.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1966)
(Source)
But it is just those books which a man possesses, but does not read, which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him. The Spanish Inquisition have deliberated on that point, and have come to a conclusion that places the matter beyond further doubt.
[Mais ce sont précisément les livres qu’un homme ne lit pas qui l’accusent les plus. L’inquisition d’Espagne a jugé ce point, et l’a mis hors de doute.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Toilers of the Sea [Les Travailleurs de la Mer], Book 1, ch. 4 (1866) [tr. Thomas (1911)]
(Source)
On an inherited book in Latin on the protagonist's bookshelf which, his not knowing Latin, makes folk suspicious. (The book is a 17th Century treatise on rhubarb.)
(Source (French)). Other translations:But it is exactly for those very books that a man does not peruse that he is condemned. The history of the Inquisition has proved this to us.
[tr. Campbell (1887)]But it is just those books which a man does not read which condemn him the most. The Spanish Inquisition passed judgment on this point and placed it beyond a doubt.
[tr. Hapgood (1888)]But it is just those books that a man does not read that provide evidence against him. The Spanish Inquisition considered this point and put the matter beyond doubt.
[tr. Hogarth (2002)]
We make war, we are told, for the love of peace. We subvert our Bill of Rights and impose our will abroad for the sake of freedom and the rule of law. We honor greed and waste with the name of economy. We allow ever greater wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of a privileged few only to provide jobs for working people and charity to the poor. And we sanctify all this as Christian, though the Gospels support none of it by so much as a line or a word.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
(Source)
This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).
I have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (2014-12-19)
(Source)
Collected in Minding Miss Manners: In an Era of Fake Etiquette (2020), though with a slight rephrasing:The only alternative to honesty is not dishonesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.
CHARMIAN: Good madam, keep yourself within yourself.
The man is innocent.CLEOPATRA: Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, sc. 5, l. 94ff (2.5.94-96) (1607)
(Source)
At bottom, every ideal of style dictates not only how we should say things but what sort of things we may say.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Preface (1961 ed.)
(Source)
Administrivia: (2025-12-19) Movement in the Fediverse
Just so there’s a record of it somewhere, I’ve shifted my Fediverse presence to a new Friendica site, https://friendica.world/profile/wistquotes, due to the previous site being brought down at the end of the year. This Fediverse presence is a lot more interactive than what traffic currently comes to wist.info, so I do reposting of the quotes I add and update here. If you’ve been looking for a more convenient way to access WIST, through something like Mastodon or the like — give it a try!
And Sergeant Colon once again knew a secret about bravery. It was arguably a kind of enhanced cowardice — the knowledge that while death may await you if you advance it will be a picnic compared to the certain living hell that awaits should you retreat.
Yet it is certain, likewise, that many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
(Source)
Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires, and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world.
If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenceless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1872-01-29), “The Gods,” Fairbury Hall, Fairbury, Illinois
(Source)
On not waiting for divine intervention to solve social ills.
First given on the 135th birthday of Thomas Paine. Collected in The Gods and Other Lectures (1876).
Let no one delay to study philosophy while he is young, and when he is old let him not become weary of the study; for no man can ever find the time unsuitable or too late to study the health of his soul. And he who asserts either that it is not yet time to philosophize, or that the hour is passed, is like a man who should say that the time is not yet come to be happy, or that it is too late.
[Μήτε νέος τις ὢν μελλέτω φιλοσοφεῖν, μήτε γέρων ὑπάρχων κοπιάτω φιλοσοφῶν: οὔτε γὰρ ἄωρος οὐδείς ἐστιν οὔτε πάρωρος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν ὑγιαῖνον. ὁ δὲ λέγων ἢ μήπω τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ὑπάρχειν ἢ παρεληλυθέναι τὴν ὥραν ὅμοιός ἐστι τῷ λέγοντι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἢ μήπω παρεῖναι τὴν ὥραν ἢ μηκέτι εἶναι τὴν ὥραν.]
Diogenes Laërtius (fl. 3rd C AD) Greek biographer [Διογένης Λαέρτιος]
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book 10, “Epicurus,” sec. 122 (3rd C AD) [tr. Yonge (1915), ch. 27]
(Source)
Letter from Epicurus to Menoeceus. (Source (Greek)). Other translations:Let no Man that is Young delay the Study of Philosophy, nor when he is Old, be weary of Philosophers. For no Man can be too early, nor no Man past his Time, in what concerns the Health of the Soul. For he that says, 'tis not yet time to study Philosophy, or that he has past his time, is like to him who says, that the time to attain Happiness is past, or is not yet come.
[tr. Kippmax (1696)]Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more.
[tr. Hicks (Loeb) (1925), sec. 122]No one is to delay studying philosophy in their youth or to weary of it in old age. For no one is either too young or too old to be healthy of soul. Anyone who says it's either too soon or too late to study philosophy is like someone who says it's too soon or too late for happiness.
[tr. White (2020), sec. 122]
Gold will be slave or master: ’tis more fit
That it be led by us than we by it.[Imperat aut servit collecta pecunia cuique,
tortum digna sequi potius quam ducere funem.]Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 1, ep. 10 “To Aristius Fuscus,” l. 47ff (1.10.47-48) (20 BC) [tr. Conington (1874)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:More worthy to cum after him constrained with a cord,
Then that it shoulde so have the heade, and leade the lowtishe Lorde.
[tr. Drant (1567)]Who ere has Money, either 'tis his Slave,
Or 'tis his Master, as when two men tug
At a Ropes ends: W' are dragg'd unless we drag.
[tr. Fanshawe; ed. Brome (1666)]Money must rule, or must obey the Mind,
More fit for Service than for Rule design'd
[tr. Creech (1684)]Gold is the slave, or tyrant, of the soul;
Unworthy to command, it better brooks controul.
[tr. Francis (1747)]That lucre, since it must be slave or lord,
May rather bear, than pull, the servile cord.
[tr. Howes (1845)]Accumulated money is the master or slave of each owner, and ought rather to follow than to lead the twisted rope.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]For hoarded wealth is either slave or lord.
And should itself be pulled, not pull the cord.
[tr. Martin (1881)]Hoarded up wealth, worthy to follow the twisted rope rather than to hold it, commands -- does not serve -- its possessor.
[tr. Elgood (1893)]Money stored up is for each his lord or his slave, but ought to follow, not lead, the twisted rope.
[tr. Fairclough (Loeb) (1926)]His master or his slave is each man's hoard,
And ought to follow, not to pull, the cord.
[tr. A. F. Murison (1931)]Money stored up
Is every man's master, or slave. A well-woven rope
Ought to follow and not lead the way.
[tr. Palmer Bovie (1959)]The money we amass will either rule or serve us;
we should lead it on a halter, rather than be led.
[tr. Fuchs (1977)]Piled-up gold can be master or slave, depending on its owner;
Never let it pull you along, like a goat on a rope.
[tr. Raffel (1983)]The money you have is either your master or slave.
The leash should be held by you, not by your money.
[tr. Ferry (2001)]The money a person amasses can give, or take, orders.
Its proper place is the end of the tow-rope, not the front.
[tr. Rudd (2005 ed.)]The money we hoard is our master or our servant:
The twisted rope should trail behind, not draw us on.
[tr. Kline (2015)]
When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war — and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings — there is always the temptation to say: “One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral.” In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 5, Such, Such Were the Joys, essay 8 (1953)
(Source)
HIPPOLYTUS: Great crimes are never single, they are link’d
To former faults. He who has once transgress’d
May violate at last all that men hold
Most sacred; vice, like virtue, has degrees
Of progress; innocence was never seen
To sink at once into the lowest depths
Of guilt.[HIPPOLYTE: Quelques crimes toujours precedent les grands crimes.
Quiconque a pu franchir les bornes légitimes
Peut violer enfin les droits les plus sacrés ;
Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses degrés ;
Et jamais on n’a vu la timide innocence
Passer subitement à l’extrême licence.]Jean Racine (1639-1699) French dramatist
Phèdre [Phædra], Act 4, sc. 2, l. 1094ff (1677-01-01) [tr. Boswell (1897)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:Crime, like virtue, hath degrees; one single day can not make a bad man just; nor can the good, in such short season, pass suddenly to utter baseness.
[tr. Heron (1858), 3.1]Some crimes always precede great crimes; whoever has overstepped the legitimate limits, may at last violate the most sacred rights; thus, as well as virtue, crime has its degrees, and we have never seen timid innocence pass suddenly into extreme licentiousness.
[tr. Mongan (1885)]Some lesser crimes always precede great sin.
He who hath once the bounds of right transgressed
May violate the most sacred laws at last;
But even as virtue, vice hath its degrees,
And modest innocence one never sees
Pass suddenly to wanton ways and lewd.
[tr. Lockert (1936)]A man who can transgress the lawful boundaries
may violate the most sacred rights in the end.
Like virtue, crime has its gradations;
Never has timid innocence
suddenly become extreme depravity.
[Unk.]Crime like virtue has its degrees; and timid innocence was never known to blossom suddenly into extreme license.
[Bartlett's]
FAUSTUS: Faustus, begin thine incantations
And try if devils will obey thy hest,
Seeing thou hast prayed and sacrificed to them.
Within this circle is Jehovah’s name,
Forward, and backward, anagrammatised:
Th’abbreviated names of holy saints,
Figures of every adjunct to the heavens,
And characters of signs, and erring stars,
By which the spirits are enforced to rise.
Then fear not, Faustus, to be resolute
And try the utmost magic can perform.[Thunder]
Sint mihi Dei Acherontis propitii! Valeat numen triplex Jehovae! Ignei aerii, aquatani spiritus, salvete! Orientis princeps Beelzebub, inferni ardentis monarcha, et Demigorgon, propitiamus vos, ut appareat, et surgat Mephistophilis Dragon, quod tumeraris; per Jehovam, gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo; signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis![Enter a Devil]
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 1, sc. 3 (sc. 3), l. 231ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)
(Source)
Spelling regularized. The 1616 "B" text is the same.
The Latin spell reads (in Eddington/Bevington (1995)):Be propitious to me, gods of Acheron! Let the threefold spirit of Jehovah be strong! Hail to thee, spirits of fire, air, water, and earth! Lucifer, thou prince of the East, Beelzebub, thou monarch of fiery hell, and Demogorgon, we beseech you that Mephistopheles may appear and rise. Why do you delay? By Jehovah, Gehenna, and the holy water I now sprinkle, and by the sign of the cross I now make, and by our prayers, may Mephistopheles himself arise at our command!
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1920-03), “Spring,” ll. 16-18
First published in The Chapbook, Vol. 2, No. 13 (1920-07). Collected in Second April (1921). A handwritten draft was dated 1920-03-21.
Graham Greene's Babbling April (1925) was named after these lines.
We ought to beware of people who do not think it necessary to pretend that they are good and decent. Lack of hypocrisy in such things hints at a capacity for a most depraved ruthlessness.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 200 (1955)
(Source)
I hope i shall never hav so mutch reputashun, that i shant feel obliged tew be civil.
[I hope I shall never have so much reputation, that I shan’t feel obliged to be civil.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1870-03 (1870 ed.)
(Source)
For one who calls himself guardian of the many, as the wise say, should first be guardian of himself.
[Qui multorum custodem se profiteatur, eum sapientes sui primum capitis aiunt custodem esse oportere.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippics [Philippicae; Antonian Orations], No. 12, ch. 10 / sec. 25 (12.10/12.25) (43-03 BC) [tr. Wiseman]
(Source)
On the death of Gaius Trebonius in January, 43 BC, one of the conspirators in Julius Caesar's assassination, who was captured and executed by Dolabella.
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:The wise say that he to whose care the safety of many is entrusted must first show that he can take care of himself. [ed. Harbottle (1897)]In truth, a man who professes to be himself a defender of many men, wise men say, ought in the first place to show himself able to protect his own life. [tr. Yonge (1903)]Wise men say that he who professes to be the guard of many should first of all be the guard of his own life. [tr. Ker (Loeb) (1926)]
’Tis easy to frame a good bold resolution;
But hard is the Task that concerns execution.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1743 ed.)
(Source)
What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.
Gene Fowler (1890-1960) American journalist, author, and dramatist. [b. Eugene Devlan]
(Attributed)
This is attributed in multiple sources to Fowler's Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961), but searches of two copies do not find this text.
In her biography The Whole Truth and Nothing But (1963), Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper wrote:One of the men I loved most above all others was Gene Fowler. He once wrote me a letter from London. “What is success?" he asked. “I shall tell you out of the wisdom of my years. It is a toy balloon among children armed with sharp pins."
The line is also shows up in Art Cohn, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd, ch. 19 "I Love You" (1958).
I was wondering recently how the error arose which leads us to have recourse to God in all our doings and designs, calling upon him in every kind of need and in any place whatsoever where our weakness needs support, without once considering whether the occasion is just or unjust. No matter how we are or what we are doing — however sinful it may be — we invoke God’s name and power.
[J’avoy presentement en la pensée, d’où nous venoit cett’ erreur, de recourir à Dieu en tous nos desseins & entreprises, & l’appeller à toute sorte de besoing, & en quelque lieu que nostre foiblesse veut de l’aide, sans considerer si l’occasion est juste ou injuste ; & d’escrier son nom, & sa puissance, en quelque estat, & action que nous soyons, pour vitieuse qu’elle soit.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 56 (1.56), “Of Prayers [Des prieres]” (1572-1580) [tr. Screech (1987)]
(Source)
The first part of this (up to "in all our doings and designs") was in the 1st (1580) edition; the rest of this extract was added for the 2nd (1588) edition.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:I was even now considering, whence this generall errour commeth, that in all our desseignes and enterprises, of what nature soever, we immediately have recourse unto God, and in every necessitie, we call upon his holy name: And at what time soever wee stand in neede of any help, and that our weaknesse wanteth assistance, we onely invoke him, without considering whether the occasion be just or unjust; and what estate or action we be in, or go about, be it never so vicious or unlawfull, we call upon his name and power.
[tr. Florio (1603)]It just now comes into my mind, from whence we should derive the error of having recourse to God in all our designs and enterprises, of applying to him in all our wants, and in all places where our weakness stands in need of support, without considering whether the occasion be just or otherwise, and of invoking his name and power, in what estate soever we are, or what action we are engaged in, how vicious soever.
[tr. Cotton (1686)]It just now came into my mind, whence it is we should derive that error of having recourse to God in all our designs and enterprises, to call Him to our assistance in all sorts of affairs, and in all places where our weakness stands in need of support, without considering whether the occasion be just or otherwise; and to invoke His name and power, in what state soever we are, or action we are engaged in, howsoever vicious.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]I was reflecting just now on whence comes this error of ours of having recourse to God in all our schemes and undertakings, and of calling upon him in every sort of necessity and in whatsoever place our weakness desires aid, without considering whether the occasion be responsible or unreasonable; and of invoking his name and his power, whatever condition and action we may be in, vicious though it may be.
[tr. Ives (1925)]I was just now thinking about where that error of ours comes from, of having recourse to God in all our designs and enterprises, and calling on him in every kind of need and in whatever spot our weakness wants help, without considering whether the occasion is just or unjust, and invoking his name and his power, in whatever condition or action we are involved, however vicious it may be.
[tr. Frame (1943)]
THE DOCTOR: Oh, I always like to do the unexpected. Takes people by surprise.
Doctor Who (1963-1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
23×01 “The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet,” Part 1 (1985-01-05) [w. Robert Holmes]
(Source)
(Source (Video)).
A number of sources start the second sentence with "It takes," which is not supported by the video.
Numbering for the story/serial within the season is controversial. Season 23 consisted of 14 episodes ("Part One" through "Part Fourteen") under the title "The Trial of a Time Lord." In turn, there were four distinct segments directed/written by different individuals, which were then separately novelized under new names (in this case, "The Mysterious Planet").
But if, in addition, you would like an unphilosophical rule which appeals to the heart, nothing will make you more cheerful in the face of death than to consider the things from which you are about to be parted, and the sort of characters with whom your soul will no longer be entangled.
[Εἰ δὲ καὶ ἰδιωτικὸν παράπηγμα ἁψικάρδιον θέλεις, μάλιστά σε εὔκολον πρὸς τὸν θάνατον ποιήσει ἡ ἐπίστασις ἡ ἐπὶ τὰ ὑποκείμενα, ὧν μέλλεις ἀφίστασθαι, καὶ μεθ̓ ἠθῶν οὐκέτι ἔσται ἡ … ἐμπεφυρμένη.]
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 9, ch. 3 (9.3) (AD 161-180) [tr. Hard (1997 ed.)]
(Source)
Hard gives the same translation in their 2011 edition.(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:But thou desirest a more popular, and though not so direct and philosophical, yet a very powerful and penetrative recipe against the fear of death, nothing can make they more willing to part with thy life, than if thou shalt consider, both what the subjects themselves are that thou shalt part with, and what manner of disposition thou shalt no more have to do with.
[tr. Casaubon (1634)]But if you stand in need of a Vulgar Remedy, and want a Cordial to make Dying go down the better, you shall have it. Consider then what sort of World, and what sort of Humours, you will be Rid of!
[tr. Collier (1701)]If you want also a popular support, here is one which goes to the heart: you will be extremely easy with regard to death, if you consider the objects you are going to leave; and the manners of that confused croud from which you are to be disengaged.
[tr. Hutcheson/Moor (1742)]But (if you would have a popular remedy, yet what may prove a cordial, against the fear of death) it will greatly contribute to this end, if you consider what sort of world you are to leave, and with what sort of characters you will no longer be conversant.
[tr. Graves (1792)]But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled.
[tr. Long (1862)]But if you stand in need of a vulgar remedy to soothe the mind, consider, then, what sort of world and what sort of customs you will be rid of!
[tr. Collier/Zimmern (1887)]If your heart asks for some simple and effective reassurance, the best solace against death is correct appreciation of the material things from which you are to part, and of the moral natures with which your soul will then cease to intermingle.
[tr. Rendall (1898)]If you wish for the common sort of comfort, here is a thought which goes to the heart. You will be completely resigned to death if you consider the things you are about to leave, and the morals of that confused crowd from which your soul is to be disengaged.
[tr. Hutcheson/Chrystal (1902)]But if thou desirest a commonplace solace too that will appeal to the heart, nothing will enable thee to meet death with equanimity better than to observe the environment thou art leaving and the sort of characters with whom thy soul shall no longer be mixed up.
[tr. Haines (Loeb) (1916)]And if you would have an everyday rule to touch your heart, it will make you most contented with death to dwell upon the objects from which you are about to be parted and the kind of characters with whom your soul will be no longer contaminated.
[tr. Farquharson (1944)]But if your heart would have comfort of a simpler sort, then there is no better solace in the face of death than to think on the nature of the surroundings you are leaving, and the characters you will no longer have to mix with.
[tr. Staniforth (1964)]Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you’ll leave behind you, and the kind of people you’ll no longer be mixed up with.
[tr. Hays (2003)]If you want another criterion — unscientific but emotionally effective — you will find it quite easy to face death if you stop to consider the business you will be leaving and the sort of characters which will no longer contaminate your soul.
[tr. Hammond (2006)]If you want a private passage at hand to soothe your heart, the knowledge of the world around you will give you some solace at death, the world you leave and the kind of people your soul will no longer be associated with.
[tr. @sentantiq (2017)]If a person waiting for death should require some vulgar comfort, they can be more reconciled to death by remembering the evils from which they will be removed, and the morals of those they will no longer have to live with.
[tr. McNeill (2019)]
Work, therefore, is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom, for the boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 14 “Work” (1930)
(Source)
One barking Dog, sets all the Street a-barking.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (compiler), # 3736 (1732)
(Source)
CALVIN: Today at school, I tried to decide whether to cheat on my test or not. I wondered, is it better to do the right thing and fail … or is it better to do the wrong thing and succeed?
On the one hand, underserved success gives no satisfaction … but on the other hand, well-deserved failure gives no satisfaction either.
Of course, most everybody cheats some time or other. People always bend the rules if they think they can get away with it. … then again, that doesn’t justify my cheating.
Then I thought, look, cheating on one little test isn’t such a big deal. It doesn’t hurt anyone … but then I wondered if I was just rationalizing my unwillingness to accept the consequence of my not studying.
Still, in the real world, people care about success, not principles … then again, maybe that’s why the world is in such a mess. What a dilemma!HOBBES: So what did you decide?
CALVIN: Nothing. I ran out of time and had to turn in a blank paper.
HOBBES: Anymore, simply acknowledging the issue is a moral victory.
CALVIN: Well, it just seemed wrong to cheat on an ethics test.
TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Telephone,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
(Source)
Originally published in The Devil's Dictionary [A-Z] as Vol. 7 of his Collected Works.
“It is hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.”
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 7 “Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest” (1926)
(Source)
For years I have hoped that we could stop war as an instrument for settling any national and international difficulties. I have worked for it and shall continue to work for it. However, one has to face the world as it is and, without discarding one’s ideals, meet the realities of the day and keep on working for what one hopes will be a better future.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1940-05-17), “My Day”
(Source)
MEDEA: Men say we live a safe life in the home,
While they do battle with the spear.
But they are wrong; I’d rather stand three times
with shield in hand than give birth once.[ΜΉΔΕΙΑ: λέγουσι δ᾽ ἡμᾶς ὡς ἀκίνδυνον βίον
ζῶμεν κατ᾽ οἴκους, οἱ δὲ μάρνανται δορί,
κακῶς φρονοῦντες: ὡς τρὶς ἂν παρ᾽ ἀσπίδα
στῆναι θέλοιμ᾽ ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τεκεῖν ἅπαξ.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 248ff (431 BC) [tr. Ewans (2022)]
(Source)
This passage was often used by woman suffragists.
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:They still contend
That we, at home remaining, lead a life
Exempt from danger, while they launch the spear:
False are these judgements; rather would I thrice,
Arm'd with a target, in th' embattled field
Maintain my stand, than suffer once the throes
Of childbirth.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]Yet will they say
We live an easy life, at home, secure
From danger, whilst they lift the spear in war:
Misjudging men; thrice would I stand in arms
On the rough edge of battle, e'er once bear
The pangs of childbirth.
[tr. Potter (1814)]But, say they, we, while they fight with the spear,
Lead in our homes a life undangerous:
Judging amiss; for I would liefer thrice
Bear brunt of arms than once bring forth a child.
[tr. Webster (1868)]And yet they say we live secure at home, while they are at the wars, with their sorry reasoning, for I would gladly take my stand in battle array three times o'er, than once give birth.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]But they say of us that we live a life of ease at home, but they are fighting with the spear; judging ill, since I would rather thrice stand in arms, than once suffer the pangs of child-birth.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]But we, say they, live an unperilled life
At home, while they do battle with the spear.
Falsely they deem: twice would I under shield
Stand, rather than bear childbirth peril once.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]And then, forsooth, 'tis they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all
Peril! -- False mocking! Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,
Than bear one child.
[tr. Murray (1906)]But we, they say, live a safe life at home,
While they, the men, go forth in arms to war.
Fools! Three times would I rather take my stand
With sword and shield than bring to birth one child.
[tr. Murray (1906), per Yeroulanos]They tell us we live a sheltered life at home while they go to the wars; but that is nonsense. For I would rather go into battle twice than bear a child once.
[Source (1927)]What they say of us is that we have a peaceful time
Living at home, while they do the fighting in war.
How wrong they are! I would very much rather stand
Three times in the front of battle than bear one child.
[tr. Warner (1944)]Men boast their battles: I tell you this, and we know it:
It is easier to stand in battle three times, in the front line, in the stabbing fury, than to bear one child.
[tr. Jeffers (1946)]And, they tell us, we at home
Live free from danger, they go out to battle: fools!
I'd rather stand three times in the front line than bear
One child.
[tr. Vellacott (1963)]They say that we spend all our time at home,
And live safe lives, while they go out to battle.
What fools they are! I'd rather stand three times
Behind a shield, than bear a child once!
[tr. Podlecki (1989)]Men say that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight with the spear. How wrong they are! I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]They say we live sheltered lives in the home, free from danger, while they wield their spears in battle -- what fools they are! I would rather face the enemy three times over than bear a child once.
[tr. Davie (1996)]Then people also say that while we live quietly and without any danger at home, the men go off to war. Wrong! One birth alone is worse than three times in the battlefield behind a shield.
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]They say that we live a life free of danger
at home while they face battle with the spear.
How wrong they are. I would rather stand three times
in the line of battle than once bear a child.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)][...] I would rather stand behind a shield three times than give birth once.
[tr. @sentantiq (2011)]They say that we live a peaceful life at home, while they do battle at spear point, but they reckon wrongly: I would rather stand armed with a shield thrice than give birth once.
[tr. @sentantiq [Erik] (2015)]They say we live secure in our households [oikoi], while they are off at war -- how worthlessly [kakōs] they think! How gladly would I three times over take my stand behind a shield rather than once give birth!
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
When legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or in a single body of the magistracy, there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically.
Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separate from legislative power and from executive power. If it were joined to legislative power, the power over the life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator. If it were joined to executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor.
All would be lost if the same man or the same body of principal men, either of nobles, or of the people, exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, that of executing public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or the disputes of individuals.[Lorsque, dans la même personne ou dans le même corps de magistrature, la puissance législative est réunie à la puissance exécutrice, il n’y a point de liberté ; parce qu’on peut craindre que le même monarque ou le même sénat ne fasse des loix tyranniques, pour les exécuter tyranniquement.
Il n’y a point encore de liberté, si la puissance de juger n’est pas séparée de la puissance législative, & de l’exécutrice. Si elle étoit jointe à la puissance législative, le pouvoir sur la vie & la liberté des citoyens seroit arbitraire; car le juge seroit législateur. Si elle étoit jointe à la puissance exécutrice, le juge pourroit avoir la force d’un oppresseur.
Tout seroit perdu, si le même homme, ou le même corps des principaux, ou des nobles, ou du peuple, exerçoient ces trois pouvoirs; celui de faire des loix, celui d’exécuter les résolutions publiques, & celui de juger les crimes ou les différends des particuliers.]Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 11, ch. 6 (1748) [tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.
There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.
[tr. Nugent (1750)]There would be an end of everything, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.
[ed. Guterman (1963)]When in the same person or in the same body of magistracy the legislative authority is combined with the executive authority, there is no freedom, because one can fear lest the same monarch or the same senate make tyrannical laws in order to carry them out tyrannically.
Again there is no freedom if the authority to judge is not separated from the legislative and executive authorities. If it were combined with the legislative authority, power over the life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator. If it were combined with the executive authority, the judge could have the strength of an oppressor.
All would be lost if the same man or the same body of principals, or of nobles, or of the people, exercised these three powers: that of making laws, that of executing public resolutions, and that of judging crimes or disputes between individuals.
[tr. Stewart (2018)]
The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless.
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American statesman, lawyer, orator
Speech (1820-12-22), “First Settlement of New England,” Plymouth, Massachusetts
(Source)
On the bicentennial of the Pilgrims' landing in the New World.
After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage!
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 1 (1965)
(Source)
We are living, it seems, into the culmination of a long warfare — at first merely commercial and then industrial, always unabashedly violent — against human beings and other creatures, and of course against the earth itself. The purpose of this warfare has been to render the real goods of the world into various forms of abstract wealth: money, gold, shares, etc.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
(Source)
This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).
We are all entitled to our little harmless habits, Miss Manners believes, but we are not entitled to demand approval for them.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (2010-05-07)
(Source)
KING HENRY: Though I did wish him dead,
I hate the murderer, love him murderèd.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 5, sc. 6, l. 39ff (5.6.39-40) (1595)
(Source)
Now do I see
the earth anew
Rise all green
from the waves again;
The cataracts fall,
and the eagle flies,
And fish he catches
beneath the cliffs.[Sér hon upp koma
ǫðru sinni
jǫrð ór ægi,
iðjagrœna;
falla forsar,
flýgr ǫrn yfir,
sá er á fjalli
fiska veiðir.]Poetic Edda (800-1100) Old Norse anonymous collection of poems
Völuspá [Prophecy of the Völva; Prophecy of the Seeress], st. 59 (AD 961) [tr. Bellows (1936)]
(Source)
The rebirth of the world after Ragnarok. Narrated by Heiðr.
(Source (Old Norse)), Other translations:She sees at last emerge from the ocean,
An earth in every part flourishing.
The cataracts flow down;
The eagle flies aloft;
And hunt the fishes in the mountains.
[tr. Turner (1836); st. 46]She sees arise, a second time, earth from ocean, beauteously green, waterfalls descending; the eagle flying over, which in the fell captures fish.
[tr. Thorpe (1866); st. 57]She sees, coming up a second time,
Earth from the ocean, eternally green;
the waterfall plunges, an eagle soars over it,
hunting fish on the mountain.
[tr. Larrington (2014); st. 59]She sees coming up for a second time
earth, green again, from the sea;
waterfalls tumble, an eagle flies above,
the one who hunts fish on the fell.
[tr. Pettit (2023); st. 57]
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
The evils inseparably annexed to the present condition of man, are so numerous and afflictive, that it has been, from age to age, the task of some to bewail, and of others to solace them; and he, therefore, will be in danger of seeing a common enemy, who shall attempt to depreciate the few pleasures and felicities which nature has allowed us.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
(Source)
If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce. Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed.
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 2, § 178 (1822)
(Source)
Epitaph on Emma Goldman's gravestone in Forest Park, Illinois. Often attributed to her (even under the same book name).
Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1881), “Virginibus Puerisque, Part 2”
(Source)
First published in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 1, part 2 (1881).
Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as “science.” There is only “German science,” “Jewish science” etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 4, Such, Such Were the Joys, essay 8 (1953)
(Source)
This is a central theme in his later novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Philosophy is odious and obscure;
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:
‘Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 1, sc. 1 (sc. 1), l. 138ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)
(Source)
Declaring to the magicians Valdes and Cornelius his decision to pursue magical studies.
Goethe's Faust (1808-1829) includes a similar litany of studies the title character feels are useless.
In the generally longer 1616 "B" text (l. 131ff), the lines about Divinity studies are omitted:Philosophy is odious and obscure:
Both Law and Physicke are for petty wits,
Tis Magicke, Magicke that hath ravisht me.
Death devours all lovely things.
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness. Presently
Every bed is narrow.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1921-03), “Passer Mortuus est,” st. 1, The Century Magazine, Vol. 101/79, No. 5
A reference to (and, in the title, quote from) Catullus' poem about the death of his beloved Lesbia's beloved sparrow (1, 2).
Collected in Second April (1921), with slightly different punctuation.Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, -- presently
Every bed is narrow.
It is this latter punctuation that is generally used in later printings.
A little well-gotten will do us more good,
Than lordships and scepters by Rapine and Blood.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1743 ed.)
(Source)
We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust — or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding and the confidence and the courage which flow from conviction.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933–1945)
Speech (1945-01-20), Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C.
(Source)
THE DOCTOR: Oh, marvelous. You’re going to kill me. What a finely-tuned response to the situation.
Doctor Who (1963-1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
21×03 “Frontios,” Part 2 (1984-01-27) [w. Christopher Bidmead]
(Source)
Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
Book (1997), Brain Droppings, “Sometimes A Little Brain Damage Can Help”
(Source)
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 13 “Family” (1930)
(Source)
‘Tis in the Power of Providence to humble the Pride of the Mighty, even by the most despicable Means. Wherefore be thou never so great, or never so little, presume not on the one side, nor despair on the other.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 2, # 2524 (1727)
(Source)
In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will. But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as any, and the peace of society is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid and the other dares not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1841), “Prudence,” Essays: First Series, No. 7
(Source)
Based on a lecture (winter 1837-1838), Boston, the seventh in his course on "Human Culture."
HOBBES: Whatcha doin’?
CALVIN: Looking for frogs.
HOBBES: How come?
CALVIN: I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
HOBBES: Ah. But of course.
CALVIN: My mandate also includes weird bugs.
NURSE: But not long
Can the extremes of grandeur ever last;
And heavier are the curses which it brings
When Fortune visits us in all her wrath.[ΤΡΟΦΌΣ:Τὰ δ᾽ ὑπερβάλλοντ᾽
οὐδένα καιρὸν δύναται θνητοῖς,
μείζους δ᾽ ἄτας, ὅταν ὀργισθῇ
δαίμων οἴκοις, ἀπέδωκεν.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 127ff (431 BC) [tr. Wodhull (1782)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:But the height
Of tow'ring greatness long to mortal man
Remains not fix'd; and, when misfortune comes
Enraged, in deeper ruin sinks the house.
[tr. Potter (1814)]But too high-pitched luck
Stands no mortal in stead at the time of need;
Nay, more, when the god is stirred to his wrath,
Dowers greater curse on the house.
[tr. Webster (1868)]But greatness that doth o'erreach itself, brings no blessing to mortal men; but pays a penalty of greater ruin whenever fortune is wroth with a family.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]But excess of fortune brings more power to men than is convenient, and has brought greater woes upon families, when the Deity be enraged.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]But to men never weal above measure
Availed: on its perilous height
The Gods in their hour of displeasure
The heavier smite.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]But the fiercely great
Hath little music on his road,
And falleth, when the hand of God
Shall move, most deep and desolate.
[tr. Murray (1906)]Greatness brings no profit to people.
God indeed, when in anger, brings
Greater ruin to great men’s houses.
[tr. Warner (1944)]This is the wild and terrible justice of God: it brings on great persons
The great disasters. [tr. Jeffers (1946)]To be rich and powerful brings no blessing;
Only more utterly
Is the prosperous house destroyed, when the gods are angry.
[tr. Vellacott (1963)]Excess on the other hand
Always surpasses what is appropriate for men.
When heaven is angered at a house
It pays back ruin in plenty.
[tr. Podlecki (1989)]But excessive riches mean no advantage for mortals, and when a god is angry at a house, they make the ruin greater.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]Excess, though, means no profit for man and pays him back with greater ruin, whenever a house earns heaven's anger.
[tr. Davie (1996)]If man holds something else dearer to moderation, he will most certainly lose out in the end. Add to that the wrath of the gods, which will fall most heavily upon such a man’s house and which will destroy him.
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]But excess
never should have a place in our lives.
It brings all the greater ruin
when some god feels spite toward a house.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]Going for too much brings no benefits.
And when the gods get angry with some home,
the more wealth it has, the more it is destroyed.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]Excess does not yield any gain,
for when a god is angry with a house
it pays with great destruction.
[tr. Ewans (2022)]Extreme greatness brings no balance to mortal men, and pays a penalty of greater disaster [atē] whenever a superhuman force [daimōn] is angry with a household [oikos].
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)
(Source)
Because my spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 6 “Eeyore Has a Birthday” [Pooh] (1926)
(Source)
I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1940-05-17), “My Day”
(Source)
It is the function of the university to preserve what is best in the heritage of the past, and pass this on to the future; what other institution can do this so magisterially? Its function is to inflame the minds of the young with passion to serve society, and to train them for that service; what other institution does this? Its function is to inspire all its acolytes with a sense of the beauty and the dignity of the search for truth, and to make sure that this great task will never be neglected. Its function is to stand aside from its own society and its own time, to exalt those values that are universal and timeless. Its function is to push outward the bounds of knowledge — knowledge of the physical universe, and of the nature and history of man, and thus enable man to confront and perhaps even to triumph over those problems which crowd about him so pitilessly. No other institution can do this.
Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
Speech (1971-04-10), “The University and the Community of Learning,” Kent State University, Ohio
(Source)
There’s no such thing as a humdrum life; to the person living it, it’s all peaks and abysses.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1966)
(Source)
DON SALLUSTE: Popularity? It is glory’s small change.
[La popularité ? c’est la gloire en gros sous.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Ruy Blas, Act 3, sc. 5 (1838) [Latham & Curle (1909)]
(Source)
This translation, which is not sourced in the quote book in question, was picked up by Bartlett's and since spread in popularity.
The passage this is from is, in most translations, cut from the play or paraphrased.
(Source (French)). Other translation:And popularity? A rattling noise, believed to be
Glory.
[tr. Crosland (1995)]
Violence, in short, is the norm of our economic life and our national security. The line that connects the bombing of a civilian population to the mountain “removed” by strip mining to the gullied and poisoned field to the clear-cut watershed to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (2005-05-14), Commencement, Lindsey Wilson College, Columbia, Kentucky
(Source)
This was either excerpted from, or included in, his undated essay "Letter to Daniel Kemmis," collected in The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays, Part 2 (2005).
RICHARD: I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 5, sc. 5, l. 50 (5.5.50) (1595)
(Source)
In his prison cell.
The sun turns black,
earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down
from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam
and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high
about heaven itself.[Sól tér sortna,
sígr fold í mar,
hverfa af himni
heiðar stjǫrnur;
geisar eimi
við aldnara,
leikr hár hiti
við himin sjálfan.]Poetic Edda (800-1100) Old Norse anonymous collection of poems
Völuspá [Prophecy of the Völva; Prophecy of the Seeress], st. 57 (AD 961) [tr. Bellows (1936)]
(Source)
The end off the world (Ragnarok) and its rebirth. Narrated by Heiðr.
(Source (Old Norse)), Other translations:The sun darkens;
The earth is immerged in the sea;
The serene stars are withdrawn from the heaven:
Fire rages in the ancient world:
The lofty colour reaches to heaven itself.
[tr. Turner (1836); st. 44, l. 4ff]The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering fire plays against heaven itself.
[tr. Thorpe (1866); st. 56]The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea,
the bright stars vanish from the sky;
steam rises up in the conflagration,
a high flame plays against heaven itself.
[tr. Larrington (2014); st. 57]The sun turns black, earth sinks into the sea,
bright stars vanish from the sky;
ember-smoke rages against the life-nourisher,
high heat sports against the sky itself.
[tr. Pettit (2023); st. 55]
Nothing can be plainer than that each nation gives to its god its peculiar characteristics, and that every individual gives to his god his personal peculiarities.
It’s like all the time I was working keeping house and raising the kids and making love and earning our keep I thought there was going to come a time or there would be some place where all of it came together. Like it was words I was saying, all my life, all the kinds of work, just a word here and a word there, but finally all the words would make a sentence, and I could read the sentence. I would have made my soul and know what it was for. But I have made my soul and I don’t know what to do with it. Who wants it?
Habit will reconcile us to every thing but change, and even to change, if it recur not too quickly.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 558 (1820)
(Source)
You may safely go to school with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world: that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent play-things; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own unworthiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1881), “Virginibus Puerisque, Part 2”
(Source)
First published in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 1, part 2 (1881).
When a man’s fortune will not fit him, ’tis as ofttimes with a shoe — if too big for the foot, it will trip him; if too small, will chafe.
[Cui non conveniet sua res, ut calceus olim,
si pede maior erit, subvertet, si minor, uret.]Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 1, ep. 10 “To Aristius Fuscus,” l. 42ff (1.10.42-43) (20 BC) [tr. Fairclough (Loeb) (1926)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:Who fits not his Minde to it, his Estate
If little, pinches him: throws him, if great.
[tr. Fanshawe; ed. Brome (1666)]Him whom his Wealth doth not exactly fit,
Whose stores too closely, or too loosely sit,
Like Shoes ill made and faulty, if too great
They overturn, and pinch him if too strait.
[tr. Creech (1684)]Our fortunes and our shoes are near allied;
Pincht in the straight, we stumble in the wide.
[tr. Francis (1747)]Whene'er our wants square ill with our estate,
Be it or very small or very great,
'Tis like an ill-made shoe which gives a fall
If 'tis too large, and pinches if too small.
[tr. Howes (1845)]When a man’s condition does not suit him, it will be as a shoe at any time; which, if too big for his foot, will throw him down; if too little, will pinch him.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]Means should, like shoes, be neither large nor small;
Too wide, they trip us up, too strait, they gall.
[tr. Conington (1874)]Whene'er our mind's at war with our estate,
Like an ill shoe, it trips us, if too great;
Too small, it pinches.
[tr. Martin (1881)]He who is not satisfied with what he possesses resembles a man wearing a shoe either too large, so that it will throw him down, or too small, that it will inflame his foot.
[tr. Elgood (1893)]Suit not one's means one's lot -- 'tis like the shoe:
Be it too large, twill cause the man to fall;
Be it too small, his foot 'twill surely gall.
[tr. A. F. Murison; ed. Kraemer, Jr (1936)]If what you have
Won't do, well ... it's like the wrong size shoe:
If it's too big for your foot, you trip and fall all over yourself;
If it's too small, it pinches.
[tr. Palmer Bovie (1959)]A fortune that doesn't fit its owner resembles shoes;
if too big, it makes him totter; if too small, it chafes.
[tr. Fuchs (1977)]A wrong size fortune is like a wrong size shoe:
Too big, it makes you trip; too little, it pinches your foot.
[tr. Raffel (1983)]If what he happens to have
Won't fit a man, it's as it is with a shoe:
Too big, it makes you stumble' too small, it pinches.
[tr. Ferry (2001)]A man’s means, when they don’t fit him, are rather like shoes --
he’s tripped by a size too large, pinched by a size too small.
[tr. Rudd (2005 ed.)]When a man’s means don’t suit him it’s often
Like a shoe: too big and he stumbles, too small it chafes.
[tr. Kline (2015)]
I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 4, Such, Such Were the Joys, essay 8 (1953)
(Source)
FAUSTUS: What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera:
What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 1, sc. 1 (sc. 1), l. 76ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)
(Source)
Giving up on Christian doctrine, since it teaches that all are sinful, and that sinfulness condemns one to death and damnation. (Faustus ignores the ideas of repentance and salvation.)
These lines show up as well in the 1616 "B" text (ll. 75-76).
This is one of the earliest mentions of the phrase che sarà sarà, which shows up first as a 16th Century English heraldic motto.
With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1920-11), “The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge,” Vanity Fair, Vol. 14, No. 3
(Source)
Collected in A Few Figs from Thistles (1921).
"Singing-Woman" is usually hyphenated in collections, but in Vanity Fair it was rendered "Singin' Woman" and in the original publication in Figs as "Singingwoman".
It is well said, in every sense, that a man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man’s, or a nation of men’s. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that.
But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is.Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-05), “The Hero as Divinity,” Home House, Portman Square, London
(Source)
The lecture notes were collected by Carlyle into On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, Lecture 1, (1841).
Intelekt without judgement iz what ails about one halff the smart people in this world.
[Intellect without judgment is what ails about one half the smart people in this world.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1975-02 “Heliotropes” (1875 ed.)
(Source)
Nothing flourishes for ever; each generation gives place to its successor.
[Nihil enim semper floret; aetas succedit aetati.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippics [Philippicae; Antonian Orations], No. 11, ch. 15 / sec. 39 (11.15/11.39) (43-02 BC) [ed. Harbottle (1897)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:For there is nothing which flourishes for ever. Age succeeds age.
[tr. Yonge (1903)]For nothing is for ever flourishing; age succeeds to age.
[tr. Ker (Loeb) (1926)]
We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other Nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933–1945)
Speech (1945-01-20), Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C.
(Source)
(Source (Audio); dialog verified)
Everyone’s shit smells good to himself.
[Stercus cuique suum bene olet.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 8 (3.8), “Of the Art of Discussion [De l’art de conferer]” (1587) [tr. Screech (1987)]
(Source)
Montaigne is recollecting an adage collected by Desiderius Erasmus in his Adagia (3.4.2, No. 2302). It's actually rendered there as Suus cuique crepitus bene olet. Erasmus maintains that the proverb is not meant literally, but metaphorically (that people value most things that are their own), though he does concede that people are more repulsed by others' excrement than their own.
Montaigne only presents the Latin, not a French translation (as is true with most of his Classical quotations). In context, he uses the phrase regarding how people criticize others for flaws that they, themselves, possess (and even consider virtuous, in their own cases).
I have also seen a version of this cited as an Icelandic proverb.
This essay (and passage) first appeared in the 2nd (1588) edition.
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:Ev’ry mans ordure well,
To his owne sense doth smell.
[tr. Florio (1603)]To each one their own manure smells good.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]Every man's filth smells sweet to himself.
[tr. Ives (1925)]Each man likes best the smell of his own dung.
[tr. Zeitlin (1934)]Every man likes the smell of his own dung.
[tr. Frame (1943)]Every man's filth smells sweet to him.
[tr. Cohen (1958)]Everyone thinks his own fart smells sweet.
[tr. Drysdall (2001); of Erasmus]
JO GRANT: Doctor, stop being childish.
THE DOCTOR: What’s wrong with being childish? I like being childish.
Doctor Who (1963-1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
08×01 “Terror of the Autons,” Part 3 (1971-01-16) [w. Robert Holmes]
(Source)
Besides, if a man is afraid of pain, he is afraid of something happening which will be part of the appointed order of things, and this is itself a sin; if he is bent on the pursuit of pleasure, he will not stop at acts of injustice, which again is manifestly sinful. No; when Nature herself makes no distinction — and if she did, she would not have brought pains and pleasures into existence side by side — it behooves those who would follow in her footsteps to be like-minded and exhibit the same indifference.
[ἔτι δὲ ὁ φοβούμενος τοὺς πόνους φοβηθήσεταί ποτε καὶ τῶν ἐσομένων τι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, τοῦτο δὲ ἤδη ἀσεβές: ὅ τε διώκων τὰς ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἀφέξεται τοῦ ἀδικεῖν, τοῦτο δὲ ἐναργῶς ἀσεβές: χρὴ δὲ πρὸς ἃ ἡ κοινὴ φύσις ἐπίσης ἔχει ῾οὐ γὰρ ἀμφότερα ἃν ἐποίει, εἰ μὴ πρὸς ἀμφότερα ἐπίσης εἶχἐ, πρὸς ταῦτα καὶ τοὺς τῇ φύσει βουλομένους ἕπεσθαι, ὁμογνώμονας ὄντας, ἐπίσης διακεῖσθαι.]
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 9, ch. 1 (9.1) (AD 161-180) [tr. Staniforth (1964)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:Again, he that feareth pains and crosses in this world, feareth some of those things which some time or other must needs happen in the world. And that we have already showed to be impious. And he that pursueth after pleasures, will not spare, to compass his desires, to do that which is unjust, and that is manifestly impious. Now those things which unto nature are equally indifferent (for she had not created both, both pain and pleasure, if both had not been unto her equally indifferent): they that will live according to nature, must in those things (as being of the same mind and disposition that she is) be as equally indifferent.
[tr. Casaubon (1634)]To go on: He that's afraid of Pain, or Affliction; will be afraid of something that will always be in the World; but to be thus uneasie at the Appointments of Providence, is a failure in Reverence, and Respect. On the other hand; He that's violent in the pursuit of Pleasure, won't stick to turn Villain for the Purchase: And is not this plainly , an Ungracious, and an Ungodly Humour? To set the Matter Right, where the Allowance of God is equally clear; as it is with Regard to Prosperity, and Adversity: For had he not approved both these Conditions, He would never have made them: I say where the Good Liking of Heaven is equally clear, Ours ought to be so too: Because we ought to follow the Guidance of Nature, and the Sense of the Deity.
[tr. Collier (1701)]Besides, he who dreads pain, must sometimes dread that which must be a part of the order and beauty of the universe: this, now, is impious: and, then, he who pursues pleasures will not abstain from injury; and that is manifestly impious. But, in those things to which the common nature is indifferent, (for she had not made both, were she not indifferent to either); he who would follow nature, ought, in this too, to agree with her in his sentiments, and be indifferently dispos'd to either.
[tr. Hutcheson/Moor (1742)]Nay, he that is uneasy under affliction, is uneasy at what must necessarily exist in the world. This uneasiness, then, is a degree of impiety: and he who is too eager in his pursuit of pleasures, will not abstain from injustice to procure them. This is manifestly impious.
In short, as nature herself seems to view with indifference prosperity and adversity, (as she certainly does, or she would not produce them) so he who would follow nature as his guide, ought to do the same.
[tr. Graves (1792)]And further, he who is afraid of pain will sometimes also be afraid of some of the things which will happen in the world, and even this is impiety. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is plainly impiety. Now with respect to the things towards which the universal nature is equally affected -- for it would not have made both, unless it was equally affected towards both -- towards these they who wish to follow nature should be of the same mind with it, and equally affected.
[tr. Long (1862)]Now, he that is afraid of pain will be afraid of something that will always be in the world; but this is a failure in reverence and respect. On the other hand, he that is violent in the pursuit of pleasure, will not hesitate to turn villain for the purchase. And is not this plainly an ungodly act? to set the matter right, where the allowance of God is equally clear, as it is with regard to prosperity and adversity (for had He not approved both of these conditions, He would never have made them both), I say, where the good liking of heaven is equally clear, ours ought to be so too, because we ought to follow the guidance of nature and the sense of the Deity.
[tr. Collier/Zimmern (1887)]Moreover, he who fears pain will some time fear that which will form part of the world-order; and therein he sins. And he who seeks after pleasures will not abstain from unjust doing; which is palpably an act of sin. Where Nature makes no difference -- and were she not indifferent, she would not bring both to pass -- those who would fain walk with Nature should conform their wills to like indifference.
[tr. Rendall (1898)]Again, he who dreads pain must sometimes dread a thing which will make part of the world order, and this is impious. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is clear impiety. In those things to which the common nature is indifferent (for she had not made both, were she not indifferent to either), he who would follow Nature ought, in this also, to be of like mind with her, and shew the like indifference.
[tr. Hutcheson/Chrystal (1902)]Moreover he that dreads pain will some day be in dread of something that must be in the world. And there we have impiety at once. And he that hunts after pleasures will not hold his hand from injustice. And this is palpable impiety.
But those, who are of one mind with Nature and would walk in her ways, must hold a neutral attitude towards those things towards which the Universal Nature is neutral—for she would not be the Maker of both were she not neutral towards both.
[tr. Haines (Loeb) (1916)]He who fears pains will sometimes fear what is to come to pass in the Universe, and this is at once sinful, while he who pursues pleasures will not abstain from doing injustice, and this is plainly sinful. But those who wish to follow Nature, being like-minded with her, must be indifferent towards the things to which she is indifferent, for she would not create both were she not indifferent towards both.
[tr. Farquharson (1944)]And furthermore, one who is afraid of pain is sure to be afraid at times of things which come to pass in the universe, and that is already an impiety; and one that pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and that is manifest impiety. But towards those things with regard to which universal nature is neutral (for she would not have created both opposites unless she was neutral with regard to both), it is necessary that those who wish to follow nature and be of one mind with her should also adopt a neutral attitude.
[tr. Hard (1997 ed.)]And moreover, to fear pain is to fear something that’s bound to happen, the world being what it is -- and that again is blasphemy. While if you pursue pleasure, you can hardly avoid wrongdoing -- which is manifestly blasphemous.
Some things nature is indifferent to; if it privileged one over the other it would hardly have created both. And if we want to follow nature, to be of one mind with it, we need to share its indifference.
[tr. Hays (2003)]Further, anyone who fears pain will also at times be afraid of some future event in the world, and that is immediate sin. And a man who pursues pleasure will not hold back from injustice -- an obvious sin. Those who wish to follow Nature and share her mind must themselves be indifferent to those pairs of opposites to which universal Nature is indifferent -- she would not create these opposites if she were not indifferent either way.
[tr. Hammond (2006)]And furthermore, one who is afraid of pain is sure to be afraid at times of things which come about in the universe, and that is already an impiety; and one who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and that is a manifest impiety. But towards those things with regard to which universal nature is neutral (for she would not have created both opposites unless she was neutral with regard to both), it is necessary that those who wish to follow nature and be of one mind with her should also adopt a neutral attitude.
[tr. Hard (2011 ed.)]
One of the codicils of my will is: “I, George Carlin, being of sound mind, do not wish, upon my demise, to be buried or cremated. I wish to be BLOWN UP.”
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
Book (2019), Last Words, ch. 18 [with Tony Hendra]
(Source)
For my own part, speaking personally, I have found the happiness of parenthood greater than any other that I have experienced.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 13 “Family” (1930)
(Source)
Thou canst scarcely be truly wise till thou hast been deceived. Thy own Errors will teach thee more Prudence, than the grave Precepts, and even Examples of others.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 2, # 2462 (1727)
(Source)
You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
(Spurious)
Not found in his writings, lectures, or speeches. See Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Feynman – Terence Eden’s Blog for more discussion.
It is possibly a misattributed variant of something said by Alan Watts ...You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.
... which may or may not actually be authentic, either.
CALVIN: (in front of the class yelling) Today for “Show and Tell,” I refuse to show you what I brought and I refuse to tell you anything about it.
CALVIN: (grinning evilly) It’s a mystery that will haunt you all your miserable lives! You’ll never, ever know what I brought! You can beg and plead, but I’ll never end your torment!
CALVIN: (laughing) I’ll carry my secret to the grave! It’s the Show and Tell that was never shown or told! Ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha!
CALVIN: (walking toward the Principal’s door, sulking) Everybody wants the same old thing.
TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Turkey,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
(Source)
Originally published in The Devil's Dictionary [A-Z] as Vol. 7 of his Collected Works.
He hadn’t gone more than half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying, “Now then, Pooh, time for a little something.”
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 6 “Eeyore Has a Birthday” (1926)
(Source)
Much has been said in this country about not wanting to participate in foreign wars and people who have said it, must now face the fact that foreign wars come very close to our own shores. We will always have not only the religious groups, but many groups who feel that war is wrong. I cannot imagine how anyone could feel otherwise with the picture before them today. But when force not only rules in certain countries, but is as menacing to all the world, as it is today, one cannot live in a Utopia which prays for different conditions and ignores those which exist.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1940-05-17), “My Day”
(Source)
At the moment when God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this [slave] trade by subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell no sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt.
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American statesman, lawyer, orator
Speech (1820-12-22), “First Settlement of New England,” Plymouth, Massachusetts
(Source)
On the bicentennial of the Pilgrims' landing in the New World.
NURSE: Terrible is the temperament of royalty,
Who are rarely controlled, always imperious;
It is hard for them to give up their wrath.
To get used to living like everybody else
Is better.[ΤΡΟΦΌΣ: δεινὰ τυράννων λήματα καί πως
ὀλίγ᾽ ἀρχόμενοι, πολλὰ κρατοῦντες
χαλεπῶς ὀργὰς μεταβάλλουσιν.
τὸ γὰρ εἰθίσθαι ζῆν ἐπ᾽ ἴσοισιν
κρεῖσσον.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 119ff (431 BC) [tr. Podlecki (1989)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:For the souls
Of Kings are prone to cruelty, so seldom
Subdued, and over others wont to rule,
That it is difficult for such to change
Their angry purpose. Happier I esteem
The lot of those who still are wont to live
Among their equals.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]Kings have a fiery quality of soul,
Accustom'd to command, if once they feel
control, though small, their anger blazes out
Not easily extinguish'd: hence I deem
An equal mediocrity of life
More to be wish'd.
[tr. Potter (1814)]Dread are the humours of princes: as wont
To be ruled in few things and in many to lord,
It is hard to them to turn from their wrath.
But to lead one's life in the level ways
Is best.
[tr. Webster (1868)]Strange are the tempers of princes, and maybe because they seldom have to obey, and mostly lord it over others, change they their moods with difficulty. 'Tis better then to have been trained to live on equal terms.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]Dreadful are the dispositions of tyrants, and somehow in few things controlled, in most absolute, they with difficulty lay aside their passion. The being accustomed then to live in mediocrity of life is the better.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]Ah princes -- how fearful their moods are! --
Long ruling, unschooled to obey, --
Unforgiving, unsleeping their feuds are.
Better life's level way.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]Rude are the wills of princes: yea,
Prevailing alway, seldom crossed,
On fitful winds their moods are tossed:
'Tis best men tread the equal way.
[tr. Murray (1906)]Great people’s tempers are terrible, always
Having their own way, seldom checked,
Dangerous they shift from mood to mood.
How much better to have been accustomed
To live on equal terms with one’s neighbors.
[tr. Warner (1944)]Oh, it's a bad thing
To be born of high race, and brought up wilful and powerful in a great house, unruled
And ruling many: for then if misfortune comes it is unendurable, it drives you mad. I say that poor people
Are happier: the little commoners and humble people, the poor in spirit.
[tr. Jeffers (1946)]The mind of a queen
Is a thing to fear. A queen is used
To giving commands, not obeying them;
And her rage once roused is hard to appease.
To have learnt to live on the common level
Is better.
[tr. Vellacott (1963)]The minds of royalty are dangerous: since they often command and seldom obey, they are subject to violent changes of mood. For it is better to be accustomed to live on terms of equality.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]They have frightening natures, those of royal blood; because, I imagine, they’re seldom overruled and generally have their way, they do not easily forget a grudge. Better to have formed the habit of living on equal terms with your neighbours.
[tr. Davie (1996)]How afraid I am of these royal rages! It’s so hard for such rages to subside.
Kings and queens have always been spoiled by power. They’re not used to taking orders. No, they’d much rather give them!
Kings and Queens only do what they want and forget about everyone else!
Oh, how much better it is to live a balanced life: to be an equal among equals.
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]Tyrants’ tempers are insufferable:
they are seldom under control, their power is far-reaching.
It is hard for them to swallow their rages.
To get used to living on terms of equality
is better.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]The pride of rulers is something to fear --
they often order men, but seldom listen,
and when their tempers change it’s hard to bear.
It’s better to get used to living life
as an equal common person.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]The temperaments of royalty are fearsome;
because they're almost unrestrained
and are so powerful, it is rare
for them to overcome their rage.
To be accustomed to live in equality
is best.
[tr. Ewans (2022)]Terrible / wonderful [deina] are the tempers of turannoi; maybe because they seldom have to obey, and mostly lord it over others, they change their moods with difficulty. It is better then to have been trained to live in equality.
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
Political freedom in a citizen is the tranquility of mind that comes from the opinion each one has of his security; and for him to have this freedom, the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
[La liberté politique, dans un citoyen, est cette tranquillité d’esprit qui provient de l’opinion que chacun a de sa sûreté: &, pour qu’on ait cette liberté, il faut que le gouvernement soit tel, qu’un citoyen ne puisse pas craindre un autre citoyen.]
Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 11, ch. 6 (1748) [tr. Stewart (2018)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:The political liberty of the subject is a tranquility of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.
[tr. Nugent (1750)]Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
[tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]
French: x4
Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1966)
(Source)
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Endorsement blurb for Charles E. Little, The Dying of the Trees (1997)
(Source)
Q: Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking to company? I am 6.
A: Yes, you should (after saying “Excuse me”). Here are some of the things that are important to tell your mother, even though she is talking to company:
“Mommy, the kitchen is full of smoke.”
“Daddy’s calling from Tokyo.”
“Jennifer fell out of her crib and I can’t put her back.”
“There’s a policeman at the door and he says he wants to talk to you.”
“I was just reaching for my ball, and the goldfish bowl fell over.”
Now, here are some things that are not important, so they can wait until your mother’s company has gone home:
“Mommy, I’m tired of playing blocks. What shall I do now?”
“The ice-cream truck is coming down the street.”
“Can I give Jennifer the rest of my applesauce?”
“I can’t find my crayons.”Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1981-03-08)
(Source)
A slightly different version was given in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Part 3 "Basic Civilization," "Concerning Children" (1983):DEAR MISS MANNERS:
Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking to company? I am six.
GENTLE READER:
Yes, you should (after saying "Excuse me"). Here are some of the things that are important to tell your mother, even though she is talking to company:
"Mommy, the kitchen is full of smoke."
"Daddy's calling from Tokyo."
"Kristen fell out of her crib and I can't put her back."
"There's a policeman at the door and he says he wants to talk to you."
"I was just reaching for my ball, and the goldfish bowl fell over."
Now, here are some things that are not important, so they can wait until your mother's company has gone home:
"Mommy, I'm tired of playing blocks. What do I do now?"
"The ice-cream truck is coming down the street."
"Can I give Kristen the rest of my applesauce?"
"I can't find my crayons."
"When are we going to have lunch? I'm hungry.”
SALISBURY: O, call back yesterday, bid time return ….
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 70 (3.2.50) (1595)
(Source)
Telling Richard it would have been great if the king had returned from his Irish wars a day earlier, because yesterday his waiting army of Welshmen went over to Bolingbroke's side, having heard a rumor that Richard was dead.
Thence come the maidens
mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling
down ‘neath the tree;
Urth is one named,
Verthandi the next, —
On the wood they scored, —
and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there,
and life allotted
To the sons of men,
and set their fates.[Þaðan koma meyjar,
margs vitandi,
þrjár, ór þeim sæ
er und þolli stendr;
Urð hétu eina,
aðra Verðandi —
skáru á skíði —
Skuld ina þriðju;
þær lǫg lǫgðu,
þær líf kuru
alda bǫrnum,
ørlǫg seggja.]Poetic Edda (800-1100) Old Norse anonymous collection of poems
Völuspá [Prophecy of the Völva; Prophecy of the Seeress], st. 20 (AD 961) [tr. Bellows (1936)]
(Source)
Narrated by Heiðr.
Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld are the Norns (Nornir), their names interpreted as "the Past, the Present, and the Future" (or "That which Has Happened / Fate," "That Which Is Happening," or "That Which Shall Happen." These Fates are analogous to the Roman Parcae and Greek Moirai. See Turner, Bellows, Pettit notes.
(Source (Old Norse)). Other translations:Then came the much-knowing virgins;
Three, from the sea
Which extend over the oak
One is called Urd (necessity);
Another Vedande (the possible);
The third Skulld.
They engrave on the shield;
They appoint laws, they chuse laws
For the sons of the ages;
The fates of mankind.
[tr. Turner (1836); st. 18]Thence come maidens, much knowing, three from the hall, which under that tree stands; Urd hight the one, the second Verdandi, -- on a tablet they graved -- Skuld the third. Laws they established, life allotted to the sons of men; destinies pronounced.
[tr. Thorpe (1866)]From there come three girls, knowing a great deal,
from the lake which stands under the tree;
Fated one is called, Becoming another --
they carved on wooden slips -- Must-be the third;
they set down laws, the chose lives,
for the sons of men the fates of men.
[tr. Larrington (2014)]From there come maidens, knowing many things,
three [maidens], from the sea which stands under the tree;
one was called Urðr, the second Verðandi,
— they inscribed on a stick — the third Skuld;
they laid down laws, they chose lives
for the sons of men, the fates of men.
[tr. Pettit (2023)]
Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old Greek verse, which says that the gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say, that they give us nothing pure and perfect, and that we do not purchase but at the price of some evil.
[L’aise nous masche. C’est ce que dit un verset Grec ancien, de tel sens: Les dieux nous vendent tous les biens qu’ils nous donnent: c’est à dire, ils ne nous en donnent aucun pur & parfaict, & que nous n’achetions au prix de quelque mal.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 2, ch. 20 (2.20), “We Taste Nothing Pure [Nous ne goustons rien de pur]” (1578) [tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]
(Source)
The first sentence here was in the final 1595 edition, along with other text on this theme. The rest (which referenced to the text immediately before those additions) is found in the original 1580 edition.
The referenced Greek verse is attributed to Epicharmus by Xenophon (Memorabilia,, II, 1.20).
Source (French)). Alternate translations:Ease consumeth us. It is that, which on old Greeke verse saith, of such a sense. The Gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say, they give us not one pure and perfect, and that which we buy not with the price of some evill.
[tr. Florio (1603)]Pleasure preys upon us, according to the old Greek verse, which says, "That the gods sell us all the good they give us;" that is to say, that they give us nothing pure and perfect, and which we do not purchase but at the price of some evil.
[tr. Cotton (1686)]Ease eats us up. This is said by the ancient Greek verse, to this effect: "The gods sell us all the goods they give us"; that is to say, they give us none pure and perfect, and which we do not purchase at the cost of some ill.
[tr. Ives (1925)]Happiness racks us. That is what an old Greek verse says, in this sense: "The gods sell us all the good things they give us." That is to say, they give us none pure and perfect, none that we do not buy at the price of some evil.
[tr. Frame (1943)]Pleasure chews and grinds us.
[ed. Rat (1958)]Ease crushes us. That is what is meant by that line of ancient Greek poetry: "The gods sell us all the pleasures which they give us"; that is to say, none that they give us is pure and perfect: we can only buy them at the price of some suffering.
[tr. Screech (1987)]
THE DOCTOR: A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.
Doctor Who (1963-1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
11×01 “The Time Warrior,” Part 1 (1973-12-15) [w. Robert Holmes]
(Source)
He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
The Salmon of Doubt, “The Salmon of Doubt,” ch. 4 (2002) [ed. Peter Guzzardi]
(Source)
And to pursue pleasure as good, and flee from pain as evil — that too is blasphemous. Someone who does that is bound to find himself constantly reproaching nature — complaining that it doesn’t treat the good and bad as they deserve, but often lets the bad enjoy pleasure and the things that produce it, and makes the good suffer pain, and the things that produce pain.
[καὶ μὴν ὁ τὰς ἡδονὰς ὡς ἀγαθὰ διώκων, τοὺς δὲ πόνους ὡς κακὰ φεύγων ἀσεβεῖ: ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸν τοιοῦτον μέμφεσθαι πολλάκις τῇ κοινῇ φύσει ὡς παῤ ἀξίαν τι ἀπονεμούσῃ τοῖς φαύλοις καὶ τοῖς σπουδαίοις, διὰ τὸ πολλάκις τοὺς μὲν φαύλους ἐν ἡδοναῖς εἶναι καὶ τὰ ποιητικὰ τούτων κτᾶσθαι, τοὺς δὲ σπουδαίους πόνῳ καὶ τοῖς ποιητικοῖς τούτου περιπίπτειν.]
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 9, ch. 1 (9.1) (AD 161-180) [tr. Hays (2003)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:He also that pursues after pleasures, as that which is truly good and flies from pains, as that which is truly evil: is impious. For such a one must of necessity oftentimes accuse that common nature, as distributing many things both unto the evil, and unto the good, not according to the deserts of either: as unto the bad oftentimes pleasures, and the causes of pleasures; so unto the good, pains, and the occasions of pains.
[tr. Casaubon (1634)]Farther: He that reckons Prosperity and Pleasure among Things really Good; Pain and Hardship amongst Things really Evil , can be no Pious Person: For such a Man will be sure to complain of the Administrations of Providence, Charge it with Mismatching Fortune, and Merit, and misapplying Rewards and Punishments: He'll often see Ill People furnish'd with Materials for Pleasure, and Regaled with the Relish of it : And good Men harrass'd and deprest, and meeting with nothing but Misfortune.
[tr. Collier (1701)]He, too, who pursues pleasure as good, and shuns pain as evil, is guilty of impiety: for such a one must needs frequently blame the common nature, as making some unworthy distributions to the bad and the good; because the bad oftimes enjoy pleasures, and possess the means of them; and the good often meet with pain, and what causes pain.
[tr. Hutcheson/Moor (1742)]Moreover, he who pursues pleasure, as if it were really good, or flies from pain, as if it were evil, he also is guilty of impiety. For he that is thus disposed, must necessarily complain often of the dispensations of Providence, as distributing its favours to the wicked and to the virtuous, without regard to their respective deserts; the wicked frequently abounding in pleasures, and in the means of procuring them, and the virtuous, on the contrary, being harassed with pain, and other afflictive circumstances.
[tr. Graves (1792)]And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. For of necessity such a man must often find fault with the universal nature, alleging that it assigns things to the bad and the good contrary to their deserts, because frequently the bad are in the enjoyment of pleasure and possess the things which procure pleasure, but the good have pain for their share and the things which cause pain.
[tr. Long (1862)]Further, he that reckons prosperity and pleasure among things really good, pain and hardship amongst things really evil, can be no pious person; for such a man will be sure to complain of the administrations of Providence, and charge it with mismatching fortune and merit. He will often see evil people furnished with materials for pleasure and regaled with the relish of it, and good men harassed and depressed, and meeting with nothing but misfortune.
[tr. Collier/Zimmern (1887)]Again, to seek pleasures as good, or to shun pains as evil, is to sin. For it inevitably leads to complaining against Nature for unfair awards to the virtuous and to the vile, seeing that the vile are oftentimes in pleasure and come by things pleasurable, while the virtuous are overtaken by pain and things painful.
[tr. Rendall (1898)]He, too, who pursues pleasure as good, and shuns pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. Such a one must needs frequently blame the common nature for unseemly awards of fortune to bad and to good men. For the bad often enjoy pleasures and possess the means to attain them, and the good often meet with pain and with what causes pain.
[tr. Hutcheson/Chrystal (1902)]Again he acts impiously who seeks after pleasure as a good thing and eschews pain as an evil. For such a man must inevitably find frequent fault with the Universal Nature as unfair in its apportionments to the worthless and the worthy, since the worthless are often lapped in pleasures and possess the things that make for pleasure, while the worthy meet with pain and the things that make for pain.
[tr. Haines (Loeb) (1916)]Moreover, he who runs after pleasures as goods and away from pains as evils commits sin; for being such a man he must necessarily often blame Universal Nature for distributing to bad and good contrary to their desert, because the bad are often employed in pleasures and acquire what may produce these, while the good are involved in pain and in what may produce this.
[tr. Farquharson (1944)]Again, it is a sin to pursue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as an evil. It is bound to result in complaints that Nature is unfair in her rewarding of vice and virtue; since it is the bad who are so often in enjoyment of pleasures and the means to obtain them, while pains and events that occasion pains descend upon the heads of the good.
[tr. Staniforth (1964)]Again, one who pursues pleasure as good and tries to avoid pain as an evil is acting irreverently; for it is inevitable that such a person must often find fault with universal nature for assigning something to good people or bad which is contrary to their deserts, because it is so often the case that the bad devote themselves to pleasure and secure the things that give rise to it whilstr the good encounter pain and what gives rise to that.
[tr. Hard (1997 ed.)]Moreover, the pursuit of pleasure as a good and the avoidance of pain as an evil constitutes sin. Someone like that must inevitably and frequently blame universal Nature for unfair distribution as between bad men and good, since bad men are often deep in pleasures and the possessions which make for pleasure, while the good often meet with pain and the circumstances which cause pain.
[tr. Hammond (2006)]Again, one who pursues pleasures as being good and tries to avoid pains as being bad is acting irreverently; for it is inevitable that such a person must often find fault with universal nature for assigning something to good people or bad that is contrary to their deserts, because it is so often the case that the bad devote themselves to pleasure and secure the things that give rise to it while the good encounter pain and what gives rise to that.
[tr. Hard (2011 ed.)]
Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the Unborn. They will do anything for the Unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neo-natal care. No daycare. No Head Start. No school lunch. No food stamps. No welfare. No nothing. If you’re pre-born you’re fine. If you’re pre-school, you’re fucked.
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
Show (1996-03-29), Back in Town, “Abortion,” Beacon Theatre, New York City (HBO)
(Source)
(Source (Video), dialogue confirmed)
In the best kind of affection a man hopes for a new happiness rather than for escape from an old unhappiness.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 12 “Affection” (1930)
(Source)
Never trust a malicious Man upon the Account that thou hast done him good Offices: For thou hast but fed a Dragon that will devour thee, if ever thou comest within his reach.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 948 (1725)
(Source)
Fuller repeated this item as # 2443 in his second volume (1727), slightly altered:Never trust a malicious Man upon the Account that thou hast done him good Offices. For thou hast but fed a Dragon, that will devour thee if ever thou comest within the Reach of his Claws.
Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking — and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof for the correctness of “their” ideas.
Erich Fromm (1900-1980) American psychoanalyst and social philosopher
The Art of Loving, ch. 2 (1956)
(Source)
“Wait a moment,” said Winnie-the-Pooh, holding up his paw.
He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks … and then he scratched his nose twice, and stood up.
“Yes,” said Winnie-the-Pooh.
“I see now,” said Winnie-the-Pooh.
“I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.”A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 3 “Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting” (1926)
(Source)
NURSE: We’re ruined, then, if we must add a new
Evil to the old one we’ve hardly saved ourselves from.[ΤΡΟΦΌΣ: Ἀπωλόμεσθ᾽ ἄρ᾽, εἰ κακὸν προσοίσομεν
νέον παλαιῷ, πρὶν τόδ᾽ ἐξηντληκέναι.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 78ff (431 BC) [tr. Podlecki (1989)]
(Source)
Reacting to the news that King Creon is going to banish Medea and her sons, on top of the existing problem of Medea's broken marriage and fraying sanity. (Turns out, she's not wrong.)
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:We shall be plung'd
In utter ruin, if to our old woes
Yet unexhausted, any fresh we add.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]Rain would follow, to the former ill
If this were added e'er the first subsides.
[tr. Potter (1814)]We are undone then if to the first ill,
Ere yet it be drained dry, we add a new.
[tr. Webster (1868)]Undone, it seems, are we, if to old woes fresh ones we add, ere we have drained the former to the dregs.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]We perish then, if to the old we shall add a new ill, before the former be exhausted.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]We are undone then, if we add fresh ill
To old, ere lightened be our ship of this.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]But this is ruin! New waves breaking in
To wreck us, ere we are righted from the old!
[tr. Murray (1906)]It’s black indeed for us, when we add new to old
Sorrows before even the present sky has cleared.
[tr. Warner (1944)]Then we're lost, if we must add new trouble
To old, before we're rid of what we had already.
[tr. Vellacott (1963)]We are done for, it seems, if we add this new trouble to our old ones before we've weathered those.
[tr. Kovacs (1994)]That’s scuppered us, then, if a new wave is going to crash over us before we’ve managed to bale out the old one!
[tr. Davie (1996)]Well then, we are finished, old man!
We are destroyed! New troubles arrive even before the old ones have gone!
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]It’s all over for us, if we take on new troubles
on top of the old, before they have been drained out.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]If we must add these brand-new troubles
to our old ones, before we’ve dealt with them,
then we’re finished.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]Then we are lost, if we must add this new evil
before we've drained the old one to the dregs.
[tr. Ewans (2022)]That's it, we're doomed. New troubles are poured in our cup
Faster than we can drink the old ones to the dregs.
[tr. Hill (2025)]Then we are ruined, if we add new trouble [kakon] to old, before we have bailed out the latter.
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
[μιμνῄσκεσθε τῶν δεσμίων ὡς συνδεδεμένοι, τῶν κακουχουμένων ὡς καὶ αὐτοὶ ὄντες ἐν σώματι.]
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Hebrews 13: 3 [NRSV (2021 ed.)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
[KJV (1611)]Keep in mind those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; and those who are being badly treated, since you too are in the one body.
[JB (1966)]Keep in mind those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; and those who are being badly treated, since you too are in the body.
[NJB (1985)]Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them. Remember those who are suffering, as though you were suffering as they are.
[GNT (1992 ed.)]Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place.
[CEB (2011)]
The corruption of each government almost always begins with that of its principles.
[La corruption de chaque government commence presque toujours par celle des principes.]
Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 8, ch. 1 (1748) [tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:The corruption of each government generally begins with that of the principles.
[tr. Nugent (1750)]The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
[ed. Hoyt (1896)]The corruption of each government almost always begins with the corruption of the principles.
[tr. Stewart (2018)
Revenge leads to an empty fullness, like eating dirt.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 6 (1963)
(Source)
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Poem (1968-11), “The Peace of Wild Things,” Green River Review, Vol. 1, No. 1
(Source)
Collected in his Openings (1968).
Contrary to rumor, bridesmaids are not obliged to entertain in honor of the bride, nor to wear clothes that they cannot afford and that make them look stupid.
And no, the bride does not have a “right” to demand either one because it is “her day.” Any sensible person who hears someone speaking in an imperious tone of “her day” would be wise to consider that it therefore isn’t going to be anyone else’s day, and to leave her to enjoy it alone.Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1993-03-07)
(Source)
Go thou and fill another room in hell.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 5, sc. 1, l. 110 (5.1.110) (1595)
(Source)
Killing one of his would-be assassins with the killer's own weapon.
In the plastic arts these symbols have steadily degenerated. Fra Angelico’s angels carry in their face and gesture the peace and authority of Heaven. Later come the chubby infantile nudes of Raphael; finally the soft, slim, girlish, and consolatory angels of nineteenth century art, shapes so feminine that they avoid being voluptuous only by their total insipidity — the frigid houris of a teatable paradise. They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying “Fear not.” The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, “There, there.”
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Preface (1961 ed.)
(Source)
Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary: we who have long lived amidst the conveniencies of a town immensely populous, have scarce an idea of a place where desire cannot be gratified by money. In order to have a just sense of this artificial plenty, it is necessary to have passed some time in a distant colony, or those parts of our island which are thinly inhabited: he that has once known how many trades every man in such situations is compelled to exercise, with how much labour the products of nature must be accommodated to human use, how long the loss or defect of any common utensil must be endured, or by what awkward expedients it must be supplied, how far men may wander with money in their hands before any can sell them what they wish to buy, will know how to rate at its proper value the plenty and ease of a great city.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-06-26), The Adventurer, No. 67
(Source)
One of these gods, according to the account, drowned an entire world, with the exception of eight persons. The old, the young, the beautiful and the helpless were remorsely devoured by the shoreless sea. This, the most fearful tragedy that the imagination of ignorant priests ever conceived, was the act, not of a devil, but of a god, so-called, whom men ignorantly worship unto this day.
You will recognize, my boy, the first sign of old age: it is when you go out into the streets of London and realize for the first time how young the policemen look.
Seymour Hicks (1871-1949) British actor, playwright, producer
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in C. R. D. Pulling, They Were Singing, ch. 7 (1952).
There was a stag, once, who could always defeat a stallion
And drive him out of their pasture — until, tired of losing,
The horse begged help of man, and got a bridle in return.
He beat the stag, all right, and he laughed — but then the rider
Stayed on his back, and the bit stayed in his mouth.
Give up your freedom, more worried about poverty than something
Greater than any sum of gold, and become a slave and stay
A slave forever, unable to live on only enough.[Cervus equum pugna melior communibus herbis
pellebat, donec minor in certamine longo
imploravit opes hominis frenumque recepit;
sed postquam victor violins discessit ab hoste,
non equitem dorso, non frenum depulit ore.
Sic qui pauperiem veritus potiore metallis
libertate caret, dominum vehet improbus atque
serviet aeternum, quia parvo nesciet uti.]Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 1, ep. 10 “To Aristius Fuscus,” l. 34ff (1.10.34-41) (20 BC) [tr. Raffel (1983)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:An hart the better chevalier as it came then to passe
Did chase an horse that fed with him from eating of the grasse.
The tryumpher after that he was parted from his foe
The man from backe, the bitt from mouthe he could not rid them fro.
So, he that feareth povertie his fredom cannot houlde.
Fredome, better then mettells all better then choysest goulde.
That foole shall beare in dede a Lorde, and lyve a dayly thrall,
For that he will not knowe to use and lyve upon a small.
[tr. Drant (1567)]The Stagg superior both in Arms and Force,
Out of the Common-Pasture drove the Horse:
Untill the vanquish'd after a long fight
Pray'd Man's assistance, and receiv'd the Bit:
But, having beat the Victor, could not now
Bit from his Mouth, nor Man from his Back throw.
So He that fearing Poverty, hath sold
Away his Liberty; better then Gold,
Shall carry a proud Lord upon his back,
And serve for ever, 'cause he could not lack.
[tr. Fanshawe; ed. Brome (1666)]Both fed together, till with injur'ous force,
The stoutest Deer expell'd the weaker Horse:
He beaten, flyes to Man to right his Cause,
Begs help, and takes the Bridle in his Jaws.
Yet tho He Conquer'd, tho He rul'd the Plain,
He bore the Rider still, and felt the Rein.
Thus the mean Wretch, that fearing to be poor,
Doth sell his Liberty for meaner Ore:
Must bear a Lord, He must be still a Slave,
That cannot use the little Nature gave.
[tr. Creech (1684)]A lordly stag, arm'd with superior force,
Drove from their common field a vanquisht horse,
Who for revenge to man his strength enslav'd,
Took up his rider, and the bitt received:
But, though he conquer'd in the martial strife,
He felt his rider's weight, and champt the bitt for life.
So he, who poverty with horror views,
Nor frugal nature's bounty knows to use;
Who sells his freedom in exchange for gold
(Freedom for mines of wealth too cheaply sold),
Shall make eternal servitude his fate,
And feel a haughty master's galling weight.
[tr. Francis (1747)]It chanced that after many a well-fought bout
The Stag contrived to put the Horse to rout;
'Till, from his pasture driven, the foe thought fit
To ask the aid of man and took the bit.
He conquer'd; but, his triumph o'er, began
To find he could shake off nor bit nor man.
such is the fate of him who, if he please,
Might rest in humble competence and ease,
Yet through the dread of penury has sold
That independence which surpasses gold.
Henceforth he'll serve a tyrant for his pains,
And stand or budge as avarice pulls the reins.
[tr. Howes (1845)]The stag, superior in fight, drove the horse from the common pasture, till the latter, worsted in the long contest, implored the aid of man and received the bridle; but after he had parted an exulting conqueror from his enemy, he could not shake the rider from his back, nor the bit from his mouth. So he who, afraid of poverty, forfeits his liberty, more valuable than mines, avaricious wretch, shall carry a master, and shall eternally be a slave, for not knowing how to use a little.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]The stag was wont to quarrel with the steed,
Nor let him graze in common on the mead:
The steed, who got the worst in each attack,
Asked help from man, and took him on his back:
But when his foe was quelled, he ne'er got rid
Of his new friend, still bridled and bestrid.
So he who, fearing penury, loses hold
Of independence, better far than gold,
Will toil, a hopeless drudge, till life is spent,
Because he'll never, never learn content.
[tr. Conington (1874)]Once on a time a stag, at antlers' point,
Expelled a horse he'd worsted, from the joint
Enjoyment of the pasture both had cropped:
Still, when he ventured near it, rudely stopped.
The steed called in man's aid, and took the bit:
Thus backed, he charged the stag, and conquered it.
But woe the while! nor rider, bit, nor rein
Could he shake off, and be himself again.
So he who, fearing poverty, hath sold
His freedom, better than uncounted gold.
Will bear a master and a master's laws.
And be a slave unto the end, because
He will not learn, what fits him most to know.
How far, discreetly used, small means will go.
[tr. Martin (1881)]The stag, being the more powerful animal in fight, was accustomed to drive off the horse from the open pasture until the latter, feeling his inferiority, after a protracted contest, implored the help of man, and received the rein. But after that, a revengeful victor, he had left his foe he threw not off the rider from his back nor the bit from his mouth. In a like manner the man who, through a dread of a small income, possesses not freedom -- preferable to metallic treasure -- will, basely, carry a master and yield him perpetual servitude, because he knows not how to enjoy a little.
[tr. Elgood (1893)]The stag could best the horse in fighting and used to drive him from their common pasture, until the loser in the long contest begged the help of man and took the bit. But after that, in overweening triumph, he parted from his foe, he did not dislodge the rider from his back or the bit from his mouth. So he who through fear of poverty forfeits liberty, which is better than mines of wealth, will in his avarice carry a master, and be a slave for ever, not knowing how to live on little.
[tr. Fairclough (Loeb) (1926)]The stag, victorious in fight, in course
Drove from the common pasturage the horse,
Until the horse, at last forced to submit,
Called in the help of man and took the bit;
But, when he had subdued his foe by force,
The rider from his back he couldn't divorce,
Nor from his mouth the bit. So, if in dread
Of Want, wone has one's freedom forfeited --
Freedom more precious than a mine outspread --
A master he will carry for his greed,
And always be a slave, because in deed
He knows not how to make a little do.
[tr. A. F. Murison (1931); ed. Kraemer, Jr (1936)]The stag, in time past, could drive
The horse from the feeding ground, and beat him in fighting,
Until the perpetual loser came crying to man
To ask for his help, and accepted the bit. Then the horse
Fought the stag once again to a bitter conclusion, and won.
He walked off and left his foe, but now couldn’t shake
The bit from his mouth or the rider down from his back.
So one who, fearing poverty, loses the liberty
That is worth even more than a gold mine will carry a master,
And cravenly slave for another, simply because
He can't subsist on a little.
[tr. Palmer Bovie (1959)]A stag battled a horse for the best grass in a field
And kept on winning until the loser in that long war
approached a man to beg his help, and took the bit.
But when it had won the bloody clash and routed its foe,
it could neither shake out the bit nor shake off the rider.
Anyone so scared of poverty he'd rather lose his freedom
than his mines is such a fool he bears a rider, a master
he'll obey forever, since he never learned to live on little.
[tr. Fuchs (1977)]The stag was a better fighter than the horse
And often drove him out of their common pasture,
Until the horse, the loser, asked man's help
And acquiesced in taking the bit in his mouth.
But after his famous victory in this battle
He couldn't get the rider off his back
And he couldn't get the bit out of his mouth.
The man who'se afraid to be poor and therefore gives
His liberty away, worth more than gold,
Will carry a master on his back and be
A slave forever, not knowing how to live
On just a little.
[tr. Ferry (2001)]The stag, being stronger than the horse, drove him away from the pasture
they shared, until, having had the worse of the age-old struggle,
the horse turned for help to man, and accept the bit.
But after routing his enemy and leaving the field in triumph
he never dislodged the rider from his back or the bit from his mouth.
So the man who, in fear of poverty, forgoes his independence
(a thing more precious than metals) has the shame of carrying a master;
he's a slave for life, as he will not make the best of a little.
[tr. Rudd (2005 ed.)]The stag could always better the horse in conflict,
And drive him from open ground, until the loser
In that long contest, begging man’s help, took the bit:
Yet, disengaged from his enemy, as clear victor,
He couldn’t shed man from his back, the bit from his mouth.
So the perverse man who forgoes his freedom, worth more
Than gold, through fear of poverty, suffers a master
And is a slave forever, by failing to make much
Of little.
[tr. Kline (2015)]
Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and the frailty of human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in Christian days, and early learnt humility.
In the one temper, a man is indignant that he cannot spring up in a clap to heights of elegance and virtue; in the other, out of a sense of his infirmities, he is filled with confidence because a year has come and gone, and he has still preserved some rags of honour. In the first, he expects an angel for a wife; in the last, he knows that she is like himself — erring, thoughtless, and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling radiancy of better things, and adorned with ineffective qualities.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1881), “Virginibus Puerisque, Part 2”
(Source)
First published in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 1, part 2 (1881).
One of the effects of safe and civilized life is an immense oversensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions seem somewhat disgusting. Generosity is as painful as meanness, gratitude as hateful as ingratitude.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 3, New Road (1943-06)
(Source)
The Lawes are of no power to protect them, without a Sword in the hands of a man, or men, to cause those laws to be put in execution.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher
Leviathan, Part 2 “Of Common-wealth,” ch. 21 “Of the Liberty of Subjects” (1651)
(Source)
FRIAR BARNARDINE: Thou hast committed —
BARABAS: Fornication? but that was in another Country;
And besides, the Wench is dead.Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Jew of Malta, Act 4, sc. 1 (c. 1590)
(Source)
Barabas trying to distract the friars from pressing him about the poisoning of the nunnery.
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1934), “On Thought in Harness,” Wine from These Grapes, Part 4 (1934)
(Source)
DON JUAN: It’s no longer shameful to be a dissembler; hypocrisy is now a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[DON JUAN: Il n’y a plus de honte maintenant à cela ; l’hypocrisie est un vice à la mode, et tous les vices à la mode passent pour vertus.]
Molière (1622-1673) French playwright, actor [stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
Don Juan [Dom Juan], Act 5, sc. 2 (1665) [tr. Wilbur (2001)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:There's no manner of Disgrace in this now-a-days, Hypocrisy is a modish Vice, and all modish Vices pass for Virtues.
[tr. Clitandre (1672)]There is no longer any shame in acting thus: hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[tr. Van Laun (1876)]There is no longer any shame in Hypocrisy; it is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[tr. Wall (1879)]There is no longer any shame in acting thus. Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[tr. Waller (1904)]Nowadays there's no longer any disgrace in it; hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[tr. Page (1908)]There's no shame in that any more nowadays: hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.
[tr. Frame (1967)]
My loyalty is due the United States, and therefore it is due to the President, the Senators, the Congressmen, and all other public servants only and to the degree in which they loyally and efficiently serve the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Essay (1918-04-06), “Citizens or Subjects?” Kansas City Star
(Source)
Regarding a bill which had just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee which would fine and imprison any one who used "contemptuous or slurring language about the President."
This passage was added to later editions of his essay, "Lincoln and Free Speech,", as printed in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 21, The Great Adventure, ch. 7 (1925). It does not appear in the original version of the essay or book.
It is impossible, either in action or in thought, to attend to two things at once, especially if they are of any importance.
[Duas tamen res, magnas praesertim, non modo agere uno tempore, sed ne cogitando quidem explicare quisquam potest.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippics [Philippicae; Antonian Orations], No. 11, ch. 9 / sec. 23 (11.9/11.23) (43-02 BC) [ed. Harbottle (1906)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:But still no man can, I will not say do two things, especially two most important things, at one time, but he can not even do entire justice to them both in his thoughts.
[tr. Yonge (1903)]But two things, above all, two great ones, no man can, I do not say, transact at the same time, but even think out with clearness.
[tr. Ker (Loeb) (1926)]Yet two affairs, especially great, nobody can drive simultaneously, nor even disentangle in the mind.
[tr. Wiseman]
Fun is the cheapest fisick that haz bin diskovered yet, and the eazyest to take. Fun pills are sugar coated, and no change ov diet iz necessary while taking them. A little fun will sumtimes go a grate ways, i hav known men to liv to a good old age on one joke, which they managed to tell az often az once a day, and do all the laffing themselves besides that waz done.
[Fun is the cheapest physic that has been discovered yet, and the easiest to take. Fun pills are sugar coated, and no change of diet is necessary while taking them. A little fun will sometimes go a great ways; I have known men to live to a good old age on one joke, which they managed to tell as often as once a day, and do all the laughing themselves besides that was done.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1875-04 “Fun” (1875 ed.)
(Source)
We were not aware that there existed in the midst of our own Country, and in the present day, a spirit of fanaticism, so base, so wicked & so bloody, as to brake forth into a frenzy of unprovoked violence, not only against the most respectable characters, but against knowledge & science themselves.
James Currie (1756-1805) Scottish physician, biographer
Letter (1791-07) to Joseph Priestley for the Liverpool Dissenters (draft)
(Source)
Following the burning of Priestley's house by a Birmingham mob, which destroyed many of the scientist's papers and experiments. Found in the Currie Papers, No. 58, Liverpool Public Libraries.
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala, ch. 5 “The Politics of Hope” (1986) [tr. Wilson (1990)]
(Source)
The last two sentences are usually combined as:Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Variant:Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Interview (1998-99, Winter) with David Silverman, American Atheist magazine
(Source)
Reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt, Part 2 "The Universe," "Interview, American Atheists" (2002) [ed. Peter Guzzardi]
The world is a higgledy-piggledy place, containing things pleasant and things unpleasant in haphazard sequence. And the desire to make an intelligible system or pattern out of it is at bottom an outcome of fear, in fact a kind of agoraphobia or dread of open spaces. Within the four walls of his library the timid student feels safe. If he can persuade himself that the universe is equally tidy, he can feel almost equally safe when he has to venture forth into the streets.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 12 “Affection” (1930)
(Source)
Think no Cost too much in the Purchasing [of] good Books; this is next to the acquiring of good Friends. But remember, they are better Ornaments in thy Head than in thy Library.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 2, # 2390 (1727)
(Source)
Now I laugh at my fear of analysis. Most people’s possession of knowledge deprives them of the sense of wonder, but such a sense of wonder and mystery is like the savage’s fear of mysterious fire until he discovers the principle of it and the mastering of it. I say that after we know all there is to know, there is still mystery and wonder of a deeper kind.
Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) Catalan-Cuban-French author, diarist
Diary (1932-11-27)
(Source)
Source of the more commonly encountered paraphrase (e.g.):I have no fear of clarity. The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. I have no fear of analysis. The possession of knowledge does not destroy the sense of wonder and mystery.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) American statesman, author
Essay (1775-02-23), “The Farmer Refuted”
(Source)
CALVIN’S MOM: There would be more civility in this world if people didn’t take it as an invitation to walk on you.
SUCCESS, n. The one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Success,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
(Source)
Originally published in The Devil's Dictionary [A-Z] as Vol. 7 of his Collected Works.
The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Postscript (1963)
(Source)
Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, “Honey or condensed milk with your bread?” he was so excited that he said, “Both,” and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, “But don’t bother about the bread, please.”
A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 2 “Pooh Goes Visiting” (1926)
(Source)
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good. The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1947-10-29), “My Day”
(Source)
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων.]
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Hebrews 11: 1 [KJV (1611)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen.
[JB (1966)]Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of realities that are unseen.
[NJB (1985)]To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.
[GNT (1992 ed.)]Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see.
[CEB (2011)]Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]
We have been accused of being selfish, and it has been said that we will want more; that last year we got an advance of ten cents and now we want more. We do want more. You will find that a man generally wants more. Go and ask a tramp what he wants, and if he doesn’t want a drink he will want a good, square meal. You ask a workingman, who is getting two dollars a day, and he will say that he wants ten cents more. Ask a man who gets five dollars a day and he will want fifty cents more. The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) British-American cigar maker, activist, labor leader [b. Samuel Gumpertz]
Speech (1890-05-01), “What Does the Working Man Want,” American Federation of Labor Convention, Louisville, Kentucky
(Source)
I once asked him why he stopped a particular series of his paintings. You know, he would start a type of painting and keep doing more and more of them until he made one that he thought was the best of the series, and it always was, and then he stopped, and started another series. Why stop, I asked him. “Dead end,” he answered. But Stepha [Fernando’s wife] once gave me a better explanation: “Your father tries to find God through his paintings. When he realizes that a particular visual concept he’s pushing will not get him there, he stops and tries a new concept.” So one day I asked him if he believed in God, or at least did he think he could ever find God. He answered, No, of course not, then added, I remember very clearly, “There is no God but the purpose of life is to find him.”
Fernando Gerassi (1899-1974) Turkish-Spanish-American artist
(Attributed)
(Source)
John Gerassi, his son, discussing Fernando during an interview with his friend, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Most of us would try to be noble, if we just had a claque we could depend on.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 6 (1963)
(Source)
Supporters of the war are constantly asking those who oppose it: Why don’t you deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side? The answer, so far as I am concerned, is that I do deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side. But I am responsible for the wrongs and atrocities committed by our side.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Speech (1968-02-10), “A Statement Against the War in Vietnam,” Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft, University of Kentucky
(Source)
Collected in The Long-Legged House, Part 2 (1969).
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
(Source)
The only wedding custom with a pretense to long tradition and universality, that of public checking up on the consummation of the marriage, seems to have been dropped. Miss Manners can’t think why.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1981-04-11)
(Source)
On the idea that weddings have rigid and immutable rules, roles, and set pieces that must be adhered to. Collected in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Part 5 "Marriage (for Beginners)," "Weddings" (1983).
KING RICHARD: You may my glories and my state depose
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 4, sc. 1, l. 201ff (4.1.201-202) (1595)
(Source)
When Bolingbroke questions Richard's willingness to abdicate while grieving over the loss.
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Preface (1942 ed.)
(Source)
Having many cats is good. If you feel bad, you look at the cats and you feel better, because they know that everything is just the way it is. You don’t have to be nervous about anything. And they know it. They are saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you will live. If you have a hundred cats, you will live ten times longer than if you have ten. One day, this will be known and people will have thousands of cats. It’s truly ridiculous.
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) German-American author, poet
Interview (1987-09) by Sean Penn, “Tough Guys Write Poetry,” Interview Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 19
(Source)
Collected in Bukowski, Sunlight Here I Am (2003) [ed. David Calonne].
Men are not against you, they are merely for themselves.
Gene Fowler (1890-1960) American journalist, author, and dramatist. [b. Eugene Devlan]
Skyline: A Reporter’s Reminiscence of the 1920s, ch. 8 (1961)
(Source)
I worried that I was going to have to be primarily a writer. Why worry, you might ask? Well, although it is true that one feels fantastic when one has finished a writing task, it is mostly horrible while one is doing it. You will see therefore that writing, ghastly at the time but great afterwards, is exactly the opposite of sex. All that keeps one going is the knowledge that one will feel good when it’s all over.
Stephen Fry (b. 1957) British actor, writer, comedian
The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, Part 2 “Comedy” (2010)
(Source)
Often paraphrased: "Writing is ghastly at the time, but great afterwards, exactly the opposite of sex."
The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action.
A man my age is willing to accept almost anything. After the initial shock of astonishment that comes each morning when I wake up and discover that I’m still alive, I can face the day with an open mind.
A revengeful knave will do more than he will say; a grateful one will say more than he will do.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 441 (1820)
(Source)
You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.
But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen. The fact often adduced as a reason for scepticism — that the same horror stories come up in war after war — merely makes it rather more likely that these stories are true.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1942-08), “Looking Back on the Spanish War, ch. 2, New Road (1943-06)
(Source)
BARABAS:Religion
Hides many mischiefs from suspicion.Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Jew of Malta, Act 1, sc. 2, ll. 282-283 (c. 1590)
(Source)
Planning to send his daughter, Abigail, as a penitent to the nunnery that his confiscated house has been turned to, so that she can recover his treasure left hidden there.
And what are you that, missing you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1921-10-31), “The Philosopher,” st. 1, Ainslee’s Magazine, Vol. 48, No. 3
(Source)
First collected in A Few Figs from Thistles (1922).
SGANARELLE: Have you no fears about returning here? It was here, Sir, that you killed that Commander, six months ago.
DON JUAN: Why should I be afraid? Didn’t I kill him properly?
[SGANARELLE: Et n’y craignez-vous rien, monsieur, de la mort de ce commandeur que vous tuâtes il y a six mois?
DON JUAN: Et pourquoi craindre? ne l’ai-je pas bien tué?]
Molière (1622-1673) French playwright, actor [stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
Don Juan [Dom Juan], Act 1, sc. 2 (1665) [tr. Wilbur (2001)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Other translations:SGANAREL: And are you under no Apprehensions, Sir, about the Death of the Governor you kill'd six Months ago?
D. JOHN: And why Apprehensions? did'nt I kill him fairly?
[tr. Clitandre (1672)]SGAN.: And you have no fear, sir, for the consequences of the death of that Commander whom you killed six months ago?
D. JU.: Why should I be afraid? Did I not kill him honourably?
[tr. Van Laun (1876)]SGAN.: And have you no fear, sir, abouit the death of that commandant you killed six months ago?
JU.: What fear can I have? Did I not kill him properly?
[tr. Wall (1879)]SGAN.: And have you no apprehensions, Monsieur, from the death of the Commander you killed six months ago?
D. JUAN: Why should I be afraid? Did I not kill him honourably?
[tr. Waller (1904)]SGANARELLE: And have you nothing to fear, sir, from the death of the Commandant whom you killed here six months ago?
DON JUAN: And what should I fear? Was n't he fairly killed?
[tr. Page (1908)]SGANARELLE: And have you nothing to fear, sir, here, from the death of that Commander you killed six months ago?
DON JUAN: And why fear? Didn I kill him properly?
[tr. Frame (1967)]
Government by the people means that the people have the right to do their own thinking and to do their own speaking about their public servants. They must speak truthfully and they must not be disloyal to the country, and it is their highest duty by truthful criticism to make and keep the public servants loyal to the country.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Essay (1918-04-06), “Citizens or Subjects?” Kansas City Star
(Source)
Regarding a bill which had just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would fine and imprison any one who used "contemptuous or slurring language about the President."
This passage was added to later editions of his essay, "Lincoln and Free Speech,", as printed in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 21, The Great Adventure, ch. 7 (1925). It does not appear in the original version of the essay or book.















































































