scraps and omissions from an old project i shall not complete (originally titled An Anthology of Adages)

initially conceived the 10th of August 2024. last worked on the 20th of October 2024.

Boullée, Deuxieme projet pour la Bibliothèque du Roi (1785)

Preface

Cicero rightly remarked that, "Before entering any occupation, diligent preparation is to be undertaken."¹ Knowing this full well, I have, in any endeavor of life, made sure to prepare well in all ways possible. This labor of mine was no different. When one gazes upon this work, they are gazing upon the labor of a single man, undertaken over a period of eight solitary months of reading and contemplation. This work, like most great endeavors, had its origin in a momentary thought of adulation. Vain hypotheticals conjured up by a youth eager for praise and love from his coevals. To understand this work more fully, however, one must be familiar with my upbringing and interest—to know the mindset of someone who would undertake such a work. For brevity's sake, I give a fragmentary account.

I am a man of many interests. Since childhood, my father raised me to appreciate the great labors and genius of mankind. Always striving to give his son the best he could, he succeeded in ample supply; for in those early days, when the mind is susceptible to so many useless frivolities, he taught me many values and why such things were good. Anything that makes a man great, improves his fortunes, makes him generous to his fellow man, and supports the livelihood he desires, was to be lauded abundantly. Anything that makes someone despicable to himself and others was to be avoided. Do not do what you hate was always upon his lips. If my father gave me anything, it was surely this. With this germ of inspiration instilled in me since youth, I have always desired to emulate the people I admire most. Unfortunately for me, this instilment waned in the wake of puberty; that dreadful age when we mature and lose the innocency of our childhood. Rebellious like most at that age, I shunned the virtues of the greats and strove to strike out my own degenerate path. Such was my life from 13 to 17 roughly, ignoring the great importance of education and wasting time on fruitless diversions. My father always stressed the greatest emphasis on education and learning in general. "A wise man can do all things, but a fool scarcely anything," he would say. As I neared adulthood, however, I sought a change in my life; a change that would make me more profitable not only to myself but to others. That germ of inspiration had been rekindled; and I sought my old ways anew. As I finished high school and went off to college, this thought was always upon my mind: "what have you done that makes you comparable to the greats." It is here that I researched endlessly the intellectual history of the world. I peered into that vast abyss and, without fear, jumped headlong into it in search of intellectual idols: those men and women I naturally had the greatest affinity for in terms of their interest. Not satisfied with merely knowing the biographies and histories of these great people, I strove to read whatever they had written in hopes of gleaming from their labors a fraction of their greatness, and endless inspiration to last a lifetime! This here marked the beginning of the tome you see before you.

The more I read, the more I was able to make connections between ideas, and see the similarities in thought amongst the authors. Realizing that knowledge is strengthened by connections made between ideas, I decided to create a commonplace book of quotations and sayings. I tried to extract what gave me great pleasure in reading and what I ultimately agreed with in sentiment. This turned into an obsession, somewhat, and I found myself attempting to cross-reference every quotation with another; all thoughts and feelings that were similar in tone I grouped together in hopes of showing a unified sentiment of mankind's greatest thinkers. In the interstices of life, with new interest popping up all the time, I labored at this on and off for over a year. That was until, at the start of 2024, I decided to devote my full effort to reading all the works of mankind's greatest thinkers: most of whom I was already well acquainted with; all in the hopes, as I said, of making myself a better man, and to leave to posterity a work by which they can all read and be inspired by.

From the 26th of January to the 10th of August, I read like there was no tomorrow. Aside from leaving a handful of hours for hygiene, exercise, and eating, my whole being was devoted to reading. Like Isaac Casaubon rising before the sun, if for no other reason than to comb his hair before entering his study to read the rest of the day. Or like Pico della Mirandola, lighting candles upon his alter next to an effigy of Plato in preparation to read him. I myself would awake, sit in my chair, and read for 16 hours straight, usually passing out with the book in my lap and my neck in an uncomfortable, crooked position. As I said, I was truly devoted to the cause of this great effort. If burnout occurred, I simply changed the book I was reading; and if I got tired of reading itself, I would go for long walks to clear my mind and return ready to continue the task. Occasionally, too, I would write poetry or watch documentaries on the author I was reading should the walk avail me of no new-found power to continue reading. While reading, I followed Samuel Johnson in my approach to marking the quotation to be extracted: I read until I found something that peeked my interest, usually by its elegance or sentiment that I agreed with, and wrote a square bracket around the start and end of the quotation. If an entire paragraph was to be extracted I marked it with an asterisk. For quotes that were in the middle of a sentence, usually after a semicolon, I wrote an ellipsis at the start of the extracted quote to show there was an omission. When I would finish a book, I would simply move on to the next one. I still am unsure if it would have been completed sooner had I actually transferred the quotes as soon as I had finished the book, rather than letting my marked books pile up. I would separate each quote by author and word. For example, If I wanted to know what Francis Bacon had said about reading, I would simply go to the name and look at each quote that had mentioned the word in question. It very much resembles the way commonplace books were kept during the Renaissance. Scholars would create a dictionary of words and have a quote taken from some author that used that word in question. Its also the same way Samuel Johnson compiled his dictionary. Where the meaning of a word was determined by how the best authors in the language used it. And such is how I went about compiling this massive tome.

Rome was not built in a day goes the old adage, and the same applies to my book. No great effort is accomplished without some strenuous effort and diligence. Leon Battista Alberti rightly said: "I then realize that the ability to achieve the highest distinction in any meritorious activity lies in our own industry and diligence no less than in the favors of nature and of the times."² Further he said, "We labored to make ourselves the equals of our ancestors and even to outshine the glory of their past achievements."³ And once more, "They are admirably prudent. For what is more fitting for a prudent being than to know by itself what particular task it has been born to carry out? Is there a better philosophy of life than to devote yourself to the one thing that you know you have undertaken with the inspiration of Minerva, as they say, and to follow that through with all diligence and zeal?"⁴

One can either assume a teleology, as our religious ancestors did, or create one, the task of the modern man. What can't the present generations learn from the past? Is there anything so troublesome in the modern world that can't be related to by our ancient forefathers? When Homer spoke of Odysseus, was he not speaking to all mankind? The struggle of a single man, tasked with the defense of his people, thwarted by fate, and now seeks to return home to his wife and child. The same could be said of Virgil's Aeneas or Dante himself in the Divine comedy. We have all embarked on a journey which we did not consent to, yet here we our: expelled from our mothers and told to find our way. Aimless, most attach themselves to whatever they are indoctrinated with, either from their parents or friends. I do not call this "raising the child," because there is no opportunity for the child to decide on their own whether the path they are being told is right for them. The source of these crippling influences is what Hegel called the Zeitgeist; the spirit of the age which affects us all in ways unbeknownst to us. The endless cycle of history, whose secrets are well known, continues on in a uniform motion. From Ibn Khaldun's asabiyyah and Vico's three-stage history of growth, development, and decay; to Spengler's deterministic cycles, Will Durant's optimistic progression of the human cultural heritage, and even to Peter Turchin's secular cycles: these are all models for the same phenomenon: human existence. The progress of history moves like the waves of the ocean; forever changing but mostly at rest. High-tides may rise at the whims of a few men, but ultimately fall back down to assume their original position. Such is life fated to remain a mere imitation of what one has already lived before. And yet, so much enjoyment is to be had, so many new experiences the individual may seek, knowing nothing else about them other than that they seem exciting. Such is what makes existence so powerful a force as not to end in self-termination. It is as Thomas Browne rightly said: "Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne."⁵ There is no further joy to life than to live itself fully. For, as Julius Caesar Scaliger said, "Enough: Let the vineyard be enough and more for how much you drink: Let the house be enough for how much it can hold you, a bed for your guest."⁶ And furthermore said in a famous epitome of his:

The Rule of Living:

Satisfy your desire for food and drink, and merit, not pleasures, but hunger and thirst.⁷

John Fletcher, that friend and collaborator of Shakespeare's, said:

Drink today, and drown all sorrow;

You shall perhaps not do't tomorrow.⁸

Like Fletcher, Abraham Cowley had it said as such:

Fill all the glasses there, for why

Should every creature drink but I?

Why, man of morals, tell me why?⁹

And Khayyam, affirming this revelry in life, said:

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine

High-piping Pehlevi, with "Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!"--the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That sallow cheek of hers t' incarnadine.¹⁰

Similarly, Hafiz tells us:

ARISE, oh Cup-bearer, rise! and bring

To lips that are thirsting the bowl they praise,

For it seemed that love was an easy thing,

But my feet have fallen on difficult ways.

I have prayed the wind o’er my heart to fling

The fragrance of musk in her hair that sleeps

In the night of her hair-yet no fragrance stays

The tears of my heart’s blood my sad heart weeps.

Hear the Tavern-keeper who counsels you:

“With wine, with red wine your prayer carpet dye!”

There was never a traveller like him but knew

The ways of the road and the hostelry.

Where shall I rest, when the still night through,

Beyond thy gateway, oh Heart of my heart,

The bells of the camels lament and cry:

“Bind up thy burden again and depart!”

The waves run high, night is clouded with fears,

And eddying whirlpools clash and roar;

How shall my drowning voice strike their ears

Whose light-freighted vessels have reached the shore?

I sought mine own; the unsparing years

Have brought me mine own, a dishonoured name.

What cloak shall cover my misery o’er

When each jesting mouth has rehearsed my shame!

Oh Hafiz, seeking an end to strife,

Hold fast in thy mind what the wise have writ:

“If at last thou attain the desire of thy life,

Cast the world aside, yea, abandon it!”¹¹

With these past quotations, I wanted to show that life is about experimenting. To face all, the good and the ill, and to say along with Thoreau: "I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is."¹² To make note of Cardano's 3rd rule for life that: "...when I had lost, I should not be content merely to redeem the loss, but should always obtain something in addition. I am, no less, one of few men who enjoy experimenting with life as well as acting from carefully deliberated motives."¹³ For Cardano rightly says also: "Among other miseries, what, I ask you, can be greater than when a man rises from bed in the morning, uncertain whether he will return to rest again? Or, being in bed, whether his life will continue until he rises? Besides that, what labor, what hazards and care, are men forced to endure with these fragile bodies, our feeble strength, and uncertain lives? I think no nation has more aptly named a man than the Spaniard, who in their language calls a man a shadow. And surely, there is nothing found to be less certain or more quickly gone than the life of a man, which can be more rightly compared to a shadow."¹⁴ And elsewhere that: "...the nail holds that which is last of all the wise: Solon used to say that the life of man extends to seventy years; for at that age Socrates and Thales died, and Hippias alone is said to have exceeded it, either that he might live more miserably or that he might console himself for so many miseries as he had endured in his old age. For he died both deprived of all his property and, besides, in exile and condemned to death. All the others died before, Aristotle, Galen, Hesiod, or Avicenna, Theophrastus, Pythagoras, Virgil, Horace. Life is short, but it is long enough if it is well-spent."¹⁵ And Francis Bacon confirming this same sentiment rightly expressed that: "A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second: for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the meridian of their years: as it was with Julius Cæsar and Septimius Severus; of the latter of whom it is said, "juventutem egit, erroribus, imo furoribus plenam [He passed his youth full of errors, of madness even—Spartian. Vit. Sev];" and yet he was the ablest emperor, almost, of all the list: but reposed natures may do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Cæsar, Cosmus Duke of Florence, Gaston de Foix, and others. On the other side, heat and vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business. Young men are fitter to invent, than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business; for the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them: but in new things abuseth them."¹⁶

Is life not uncertain yet worth living? Are all these men possibly wrong in their judgement which points to the same opinion? If life be a shadow, then let the rising sun shorten our frame; and when it descends, let it elongate our stay, until we are eventually blotted out completely. For life is one big experiment. Regulations may be made in our conduct, to reduce as far as possible uncertainties, but in the full view of it all, no man can know everything. We must accept some blindness in the consequences of our actions. So be it, however, for one cannot perfectly rationalize all aspects of life. You live as your life presents itself to you. The question you must ask is, to who is the master? Shall I let life control me, or shall I reign supreme at the helm and command my own existence. It is as Tennyson put rightly:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.¹⁷

And, speaking of that life piled on itself, Keats rightly reminds us all that this being of ours is short and transitory, so that we must make the most while we live on earth:

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high pilèd books, in charactry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.¹⁸

What else has to be said, for life itself is its own novel. We live the dreams of other people, and we aspire to a higher light beyond what we seek. For what can be said of our life has already been said in the final verse in the Gospel of John, when he said: "And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which, if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."¹⁹ Our stories leave an impact on the earth, no matter how small, and leave behind them a trace of who we are; and this trace left would no doubt fill entire libraries. For these volumes would contain our every deed, the magnanimous and the decadent. Tennyson, again, says:

It may be that no life is found,

Which only to one engine bound

Falls off, but cycles always round."²⁰

Or perhaps Emily Dickinson has summarized life correctly:

I HAVE no life but this,

To lead it here;

Nor any death, but lest

Dispelled from there;

Nor tie to earths to come,

Nor action new,

Except through this extent,

The realm of you.²¹

I speak of the great endurance of life. As I said before and shall repeat again, this work is to vindicate our human greatness. To call upon all those greats that have come before, and to relish in their profound sayings. To rouse the mind to excellence by way of excellence. Leibniz said of history: "I wish there might be some persons who would devote themselves to drawing from history that which is most useful, as the extraordinary examples of virtue, remarks upon the conveniences of life, stratagems of politics and war. And I wish that a kind of universal history were written which should indicate only such things..."²² And further related that: "The chief end of history, like that of poetry, is to teach prudence and virtue by examples, and to exhibit vice in such a way as to arouse aversion and lead to its avoidance."²³ And does not such a work as mine fulfill this view entirely. Were these laconics not the creatures of Hume, who said: "A Creature, that traces Causes and Effects to a great Length and Intricacy; extracts general Principles from particular Appearances; improves upon his Discoveries; corrects his Mistakes; and makes his very Errors profitable."²⁴

To follow in the path of renaissance scholarship, and to find the following convincing: "A student who is just entering upon a course of independent reading should direct his attention to those authors who have treated of a wide range of subjects, as Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, and Pliny, whose Natural History is indeed as wide as Nature herself. To these I may add St Augustine De Civitate Dei, so valuable for the light it throws upon the historic rites and ceremonies and the religious beliefs of the Ancient World. In such reading the practice of making extracts, where the interest of the subject matter suggests it, and of collecting parallel passages from different authors, is an important help to the student. Nor do I forget to urge the well-known device of the Pythagoreans, who in the evening revolved whatever of worth they had heard or had read during the day. Nothing more surely conduces to the clear memory of what we have acquired. I would propose, in addition to this, a monthly revision, upon a fixed day, of the entire course of our reading during the previous four weeks."²⁵

And Ralph Waldo Emerson has put it as such: "I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."²⁶

Seneca, on the other hand, has just about the opposite view of Emerson, yet they touch on precisely the same subject. He says: "6. If you insist, however, I shall not be niggardly with you, but lavish; for there is a huge multitude of these passages; they are scattered about in profusion, – they do not need to be gathered together, but merely to be picked up. They do not drip forth occasionally; they flow continuously. They are unbroken and are closely connected. Doubtless they would be of much benefit to those who are still novices and worshipping outside the shrine; for single maxims sink in more easily when they are marked off and bounded like a line of verse. 7. That is why we give to children a proverb, or that which the Greeks call Chria, to be learned by heart; that sort of thing can be comprehended by the young mind, which cannot as yet hold more. For a man, however, whose progress is definite, to chase after choice extracts and to prop his weakness by the best known and the briefest sayings and to depend upon his memory, is disgraceful; it is time for him to lean on himself. He should make such maxims and not memorize them. For it is disgraceful even for an old man, or one who has sighted old age, to have a note-book knowledge. "This is what Zeno said." But what have you yourself said? "This is the opinion of Cleanthes." But what is your own opinion? How long shall you march under another man's orders? Take command, and utter some word which posterity will remember. Put forth something from your own stock. 8. For this reason I hold that there is nothing of eminence in all such men as these, who never create anything themselves, but always lurk in the shadow of others, playing the role of interpreters, never daring to put once into practice what they have been so long in learning. They have exercised their memories on other men's material. But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master. 9. "Thus said Zeno, thus said Cleanthes, indeed!" Let there be a difference between yourself and your book! How long shall you be a learner? From now on be a teacher as well! "But why," one asks, "should I have to continue hearing lectures on what I can read?" "The living voice," one replies, "is a great help." Perhaps, but not the voice which merely makes itself the mouthpiece of another's words, and only performs the duty of a reporter."²⁷

Where Emerson tells us that everything within the writings we read should be viewed as part of our own rejected thoughts, Seneca tells us to shun those same thoughts and speak through your own confidence on the subject. This I find hilarious considering he contradicts himself in the same letter to Lucilius, saying: "You wish me to close these letters also, as I closed my former letters, with certain utterances taken from the chiefs of our school. But they did not interest themselves in choice extracts; the whole texture of their work is full of strength. There is unevenness, you know, when some objects rise conspicuous above others. A single tree is not remarkable if the whole forest rises to the same height. 2. Poetry is crammed with utterances of this sort, and so is history. For this reason I would not have you think that these utterances belong to Epicurus: they are common property and are emphatically our own."²⁸ So which is it Seneca? Are the quotations we make reference to in our writings the mere opinions of other men, or are they our common property as Emerson originally had it? I think what you mean to say to Lucilius is that you should avoid quoting verbatim what someone else has said; rather, take what you can from your own understanding of the thing said and make it your own. Turn what has been said into something that you said. Make it unique, give it a new spin or interpretation.

What I find questionable in this doctrine, however, is this: why would I wish to express in my own way something that someone else has already explained thoroughly well, and in some ways perhaps better than I ever could. How could I improve on a subject that Alexander Pope or Charles Caleb Colton already touched? I'm in thorough agreement with Montaigne when he said: "I quote others only in order the better to express myself."²⁹ The most I would be able to do is rewrite an old sentiment that has already received, in my view, sufficient treatment. As I write these words now, I conjure up quotations that seem appropriate for such a context. The art of quoting is this: that one should choose the most correct sayings for the context; and one should avoid verbosity and ornamentation, but only use what is necessary for explication. What is better than this in writing? One could object and say that the greatest writers hardly used the quotes of others to make their writings great: those such as Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Virgil, Pope, Voltaire, Colton, Whitman, etc. But the converse holds just as true: Bacon, Grotius, Cardano, Selden, Mirandola, Erasmus, Alberti, Petrarch, Montaigne, Robert Burton, etc. Then there are those that lie somewhere in the middle, such as: Leibniz, Milton, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Seneca, and Emerson.

The first writers listed are unique in that they rarely quote others. They formulate their writings from simple ideas which they elaborate on using either their own imagination, or from what seems most reasonable to presume. This leads to a style that is their own and is easy to adopt but hard to emulate. This is, to some effect, what makes them so quotable; they say things in such a way that upon reading it, one would think it should never have to be said again, for it cannot be improved upon. Like what Byron said of Pope, "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting, religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, ‘That of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story.’ Here is a statesman’s opinion of poetry: it is honourable to him and to the art. Such a ‘poet of a thousand years’ was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our literature. But it can want them—he himself is a literature."³⁰

Of the second writers, they are to be praised more for their erudition and vast reading than for their diction. They are usually dry, prolix, and without that imaginative spirit which breathes the breath of life into expression. There words do not come flying off the page and dance around our heads eager for continuous contemplation and appreciation, but rather are to be lauded for how much knowledge they have crammed in their head. J.S. Mill said of such learning, "Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself."³¹ In construction they are mostly led by the quotation itself, which gives birth to new ideas. In theory this is excellent, but in practice it is another question. Their fault is to overburden the prose with quotation after quotation; often giving the sense of reading from an index rather than from the mind of the author. This is most prevalent in Grotius, Burton, and Montaigne. But, for the quotarians and paremiographers among us, these people represent the pinnacle of style and erudition. Let the praises of Erasmus' Adagia by Niccolò Sagundino ever be upon our lips with regard to this specie of writers: "I can hardly say what nectar sweet as honey I sip from your most delightful [Adages], rich source of nectar as they are, what lovely flowers of every mind I gather thence like a honey-bee, carrying them off to my hive and building them into the fabric of what I write. To their perusal I have devoted two hours a day."

The third kind of writers are those who strike the golden mean between ingenuity and ineptitude. The greatest of them is without doubt Emerson. For he strikes such a balance in such a unique way, that its almost hard to put to words. Emerson is the father of American literature. Prior to him, the only writers of note in the newly founded United States was Thomas Jefferson (made famous for his Notes on the State of Virginia and writing the Declaration of Independence), Benjamin Franklin (known for his Poor Richards Almanac), and James Fenimore Cooper (for his writing of The Last of the Mohicans). The problem with Jefferson and Franklin, however, is that they had no uniqueness in prose style. Both are very well read and could write a sentence better than most could in their lifetime, but its hard to distinguish them amongst other English writers at the time. Both, quite understandably, held firm to British (English in their day) cultures and norms. There was nothing uniquely American about them in their prose aside from their strong passion for liberalism in the Lockean sense. What made Emerson Emerson was exactly that: he was himself in full and expressed it as much. Reading close to 10,000 books in his lifetime, there has perhaps never been another American like Emerson before or since. Very few in history match the sheer mass of reading he undertook, let alone the accumulation and synthesis of such ideas. "He," as Harold Bloom put it, "has prophesied all. He is the spirit and sage of America." What is uniquely American about Emerson is his prose style, particularly in his sentence construction. Drawing primarily from Montaigne in style, Emerson sought to write about the world as he saw it. He was the father of America's first philosophical movement, the Transcendentalists, which held that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. The concept of the individual was the birthchild of Emerson. Prior to him, the individual was not a subject worthy of writing about seriously. The essay, created by Montaigne, and its offshoot, the table-talk, popularized by Martin Luther, was the closest thing we had to rugged individualism prior to Emerson.

Born in 1803 to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister, Emerson began his education somewhat late, in 1812 at the age of nine. He then went off the Harvard two years later and was not noted for his academic attainments: graduating in the exact middle of his class of 59 people. [Buell, p. 13.] Not one to be deterred by what a grade says, Emerson went into the ministry following in his fathers footsteps, and was ordained on January 11, 1829. [Richardson, p. 88.] He worked at Boston's Second Church (a well known unitarian church) as a junior pastor. Following the death of his wife in 1831, Emerson questioned his faith and found that the ministry was too conservative for his religious views. He resigned from preaching one year later and went into the then popular public lecturing circuit, where he could be rid of such burdensome tradition in the church; where one could express the views they truly felt, and not feel like going continuously against the grain. For those that know the rest of the biography, you could well say the rest is history. For from these lecture tours and European travels brought to life the first truly great production of American literature: Emerson's 1836 publication entitled Nature, perhaps the best expression of his Transcendentalism, the belief that everything in our world—even a drop of dew—is a microcosm of the universe. To get a taste of the kind of Emersonian prose I made mention of earlier, I want you, dear reader, to absorb as best you can the incomparable display of genius shown in the following extracts from Nature:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship."

"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the not me, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, Nature. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses;—in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result."

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befal me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances,—master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature."

"By the aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the world changed, from the era of Noah to that of Napoleon! The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him."

"The ancient Greeks called the world κοσμος, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse hath its own beauty."

"Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man, is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly in our memory with the whole geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him,—the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man."

"In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest. That which seems faintly possible — it is so refined, is often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, But is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments."

"The perception of this class of truths makes the eternal attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, "poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit."

"At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted and he is a selfish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner's needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne. Meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light,—occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force,—with reason as well as understanding. Such examples are; the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle, as in religious and political revolutions, and in the abolition of the Slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. These are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, vespertina cognitio, but that of God is a morning knowledge, matutina cognitio."

"So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect,—What is truth? and of the affections,—What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; 'Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Cæsar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Cæsar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south, the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, and warm hearts, and wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,—a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,—he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.'"

To avoid rewriting the entirety of it, for it is that good, one sees the sage of Concord in his youth as a writer. For anyone who has read Montaigne, it is easy to see where Emerson took his prose style. Before Virginia Woolf, William James, and Friedrich Nietzsche, there was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Woolf and James were made famous for their "stream of consciousness" writing; in essence, the complete eradication of structured narrative for the sake of writing with a greater emphasis on emotional tone. Woolf did this in her incomparable journals, writing on everything that came to mind merely for the sake of writing; she would play with words and ideas as they appeared in her conscience, and she was the master of every letter. She made language dance and, with a flurry of personal quips and light-hearted insults, she spoke almost directly to the reader: to say to us, "read me, for you who wish to know the secrets of others can get your fill here." This also made her a unique literary critic, for she spoke more on the emphasis of direct characterization and development, rather than the intricacies of plot and author purpose. William James, the father of American Psychology, was the first to employ this personal kind of writing in scientific fields. This led to that unique voice within narrative structure; what turned once boring and impenetrable science articles to enjoyable, personal, and interesting pieces of literature; the exact opposite of Herbert Spencer in that sense, whos prose was as formulaic and structured as Aristotle's. This kind of writing was later mastered and adopted to the explication of history by Will Durant, whose prose style is a mix of Emerson, though with less emphasis on the spiritual, and James, though less scientific and with less use of quotation. Durant is truly unique in that way, for he adopted a known style of writing and was so good at it that he made it his own. We are all inspired by the same muse, it is simply manifested differently in us. Will beat to the tune of a different drum, and he stands above all of us in his elegance of narrative; a feat no historian before or since has ever come close to matching. One can only confute him on the grounds of historical inaccuracies, but never for the dryness of style. There is no end to the greatness that is shown in those encyclopedic 11 volumes we call The Story of Civilization.

And then we come to Nietzsche, who, at present at least, is ranked 2nd only to Goethe in terms of excellence of prose in the German language. Famously hard to render properly into English, as Edger Allen Poe is to German (noted by Arno Schmidt in his famously long Zettel's Traum), Nietzsche represents a different kind of writing that isn't stream of consciousness, but isn't structured either. He is a master of what is called aphoristic writing. First noted of by Aristotle in his book on Rhetoric, this kind of writing places emphasis on concise, pithy, statements of feeling told from the perspective of that author. This style was first mastered, without question, by Baltasar Gracián: made famous by his Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia or The Art of Worldly Wisdom. He was a Jesuit from Aragón, born at a time when Cervantes immortalized the Spanish language with his Don Quixote, not unlike Milton in the wake of a Shakespeare. Gracián was not well known outside of Spain until he had European notoriety thrusted upon him by the praise of a single pessimist; that of course being the great Schopenhauer, himself a noted writer of great essays and books on prudence. One could argue that Schopenhauer was the forerunner to Nietzsche in prose style, which is absolutely true. Nietzsche read every word Schopenhauer had written and was greatly influenced by him, although he later disagreed with a lot of what his teacher had to say, like most great students. Sickly in health for practically his entire life, Nietzsche developed a way of writing that would get at the heart of his every thought without having to spend too much time actually writing. He thought immensely, one could say every book he wrote was already in his head by the time he put the actual pen to paper. He once said: "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book— what everyone else does not say in a book."³² Nietzsche can be characterized by his directness, forcefulness, and excellent vocabulary. Scathing of Christianity, his The Antichrist is perhaps the greatest critique of Christian ethics ever written. In terms of affirming life: his will-to-power, his piano music, his Übermensch, his desire to bring mankind out of the depths of nihilism, his prophecy for the 20th century: like that of Dostoevsky's (whom he also read). The praise for Nietzsche at present borders on adulation (alongside Marcus Aurelius and Seneca). Thanks in no small part to the labors of Jordan Peterson, at present the most popular public intellectual: although I say of him as Poe said of Longfellow: "We grant him high qualities, but deny him the Future."³³ It also helps when your right, which Nietzsche was in every essential detail. His most famous quote at present is from his 1882 masterpiece The Gay Science, which epitomizes the beginning of nihilism in the west:

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

It resembles that of Michelangelo's anguish:

From heaven came my divine and entire beauty,

and the only mortal body from my father.

If what I had from God is dead with me,

what then does the mortal hope for from death?³⁴

What hope is there for life when we lose what orients our meaning? What is there when the narrative we tell ourselves ends? Can we continue to function as a society when long held values are vanquished? This is the quintessential problem of the modern world. This single quote is what led people to call Nietzsche the modern day Plato, for all things we write today are mere footnotes to problems Nietzsche had already laid out over a century ago. Nietzsche's solution to the specter of nihilism that hung over the world was his doctrine of the will to power; an idea that had its origins in an early work of his titled The Birth of Tragedy. In short, the death of God and nihilism in general occurs when society emphasizes the Apollonian side of our being: that side associated with art, music, poetry, logic, and prudence; over the Dionysian, which emphasizes dance, pleasure, emotions, instincts, irrationality and chaos. The Apollonian represents the structures, ideals, and values that have been central to Western civilization, including those derived from Christianity. The "death of God" signifies the collapse of these structures, leaving a void where reason, order, and traditional moral values once stood. With the "death of God," Nietzsche saw an opportunity for the re-emergence of the Dionysian spirit. Without the constraints of traditional morality, individuals could embrace a more authentic and intense form of existence, characterized by the Dionysian qualities of passion, instinct, and the acceptance of life's inherent chaos and suffering. Nietzsche believed that a healthy culture or individual should balance both Apollonian and Dionysian elements. The decline of religious and moral certainties (Apollonian) does not mean that life should descend into chaos (Dionysian) without any structure. Instead, Nietzsche envisioned a new kind of order, one that acknowledges the "death of God" but finds meaning through the creative, life-affirming aspects of the Dionysian spirit. In the absence of God, Nietzsche called for the creation of new values and ideals, a process that involves the Dionysian ability to destroy old forms and the Apollonian ability to create new ones. The "Übermensch" (Overman or Superman) is an ideal Nietzsche proposed, representing someone who can create new values in a post-Christian world, synthesizing both Apollonian and Dionysian forces.

It is the beginning of Existentialism, which is the dominant presupposition in life teleology today. Like Emerson's representative men, the ideal Übermensch for Nietzsche were: Socrates, Caesar, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Napoleon. Two of the greatest generals and statesmen history has known, the most influential philosopher in western history, the greatest writer in the English language (perhaps the greatest writer of all time), and finally three of the greatest polymaths and universal geniuses mankind can boast. Unsurprisingly, the overlap between Nietzsche and Emerson in this regard is Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe. A single man who willed himself from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of power, and had dreams of accomplishing what Alexander the Great could not. And two men who, as long as the human species continues, will forever be remembered for their ability to speak to every aspect of life; for they lived life, as Tennyson put it: …To The Lees³⁵

There is at present no such men as Goethe, Shakespeare, or Napoleon. No Plato's, Aristotle's, or Swedenborg's. No universal geniuses, no polymaths, no great writers, and no outstanding poets, no Nobel laureate's of note, and no Einstein's of science. In America, our greed and belief in nihilistic materialism, to fill that void of God, has led us all astray. We do not search the inner depths of our souls, we do not write from the heart: we cannot say any longer that "all is true, for my experience with nature and imagination are enough for my fulfillment." We our a society without a hope, and we cannot agree on solutions to problems that divide us daily. In short, there is no inspiration anymore. We don't have individual life philosophies, we have group think, power dynamics, and nepotism. The bane of humane studies, the collapse of humanities departments in America, the worthless conjectures of Foucault and Derrida. The subjectivism of Saussure, that parasite of literary criticism: who allowed the flood gates to open, so that every interpretation has equal footing, demolishing the foundation of western criticism. That battle which Harold Bloom fought for his entire career: the loss of literary standards, which weaken the cultural fabric we have established. You tear down the stories that unite us. You abuse your individualism for the sake of making everyone a clone of yourself. You foolish individual! You view yourself equal to everyone, yet would not allow others their own expression on controversial topics, why? Is it your plan to destroy all that our ancestors have fought so hard to build? Why should a country that has the 1st amendment tolerate cancel culture? I cannot think of anything more anathema to the indomitable spirit of America. This nonsense must end, or shall we cease this great enterprise. Shall we make the founding fathers roll in their graves? Those men who continuously fought with the known certainty of death should they fail? No I say. I affirm the greatness of humanity, and the desire to live life, as we all do, in peace, and to die with honor. To shun temerity and replace it with prudence, to hate evil, to love good, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. To say along with Churchill: "Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." To echo what Moses said to the Israelites as they prepared to enter the promise land:

"חִזְקוּ וְאִמְצוּ אַל־תִּירְאוּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצוּ מִפְּנֵיהֶם"³⁶

(Chizku ve-imtzu al-tira'u ve-al-ta'artzu mipeneihem.)

[Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them.]

And, in a sense, I write without realizing that I emulate Emerson, and in this way we come full circle. For the diatribes I go on are in strict Emersonian spirit. They represent that individualism, that self-reliance, that calling upon my own genius to say what has already been said. This is why I see Emerson as the greatest of American writers, he is our Socrates, he is our Shakespeare, he is our Voltaire, he is our Goethe: he is to America what Jesus is to Christianity. Harold Bloom once remarked that Hamlet represents the secular version of Christ. And I would say that Emerson is Americas Hamlet. He is embodied within us all; he speaks on all our behalf's whether we know it or not. To be American is to have an innate understanding of Emerson. Every Muslim recites the Shahada, the declaration of faith, as such:

"أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأشهد أن محمداً رسول الله"

(Ashhadu an lā ilāha illā Allāh, wa ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūl Allāh.)

[I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.]

And, if I may be so bold, I bear witness that there is no god but Emerson, and I bear witness that he is the ultimate teacher of life.

And there is nothing but that in this tome, the life of the greatest authors spilled out onto the page. In a sense, one could view this book as an ode to human accomplishment. The sayings, maxims, adages, proverbs, apothegms, and quotations all represent the human condition as told through the perspective of a single individual. Collect enough individuals, and one creates a society of the human spirit. One does not change in a day, one changes over a long period of time after many experiences have been had and which can be felt. We all recognize the greatness of Shakespeare because each of his characters represent us. We see with clear eyes the worldview of Montaigne because he spoke from his own experience. So too did da Vinci, who said: "They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases."³⁷ And also, "Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their Masters. Why go about puffed up and pompous, dressed decorated with [the fruits], not of their labors, but of those of others. And they will not allow me my own. They will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they—who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others—be blamed."³⁸

Yes, dear reader, this labor is the embodiment of my appreciation of mankind. It represents the best of us, and can be used to deal with and neutralize the worst in us. I speak of enduring our existence, and getting through life nobly and with honor. To die with a tranquil mind and loving our life for the decisions we have made in it. When one comes home from a long day of labor, and is rather annoyed at there situation in life, let this book call upon them, so that they may say as Machiavelli did: "Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them."³⁹ To say, as Joseph Hall did: "What a happiness is it that, without the aid of necromancy, I can here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them upon all my doubts; that I can at pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments in all doubtful points which I propose."⁴⁰ Or perhaps like Sir William Waller, who said: "Here is the best solitary company in the world, and in this particular, chiefly excelling any other. What an advantage I have by this good fellowship, that besides the help I receive from it in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived. That I can be acquainted with the events of three or four thousand years ago as if they were weekly occurrences. Here, without traveling as far as India, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times, the most learned philosophers, and the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, and without suspicion of felony, make use of them as my own."⁴¹

I personally know of nothing more useful and good than to use ones time well, steeped in the acquisition of knowledge. Da Vinci, speaking rightly, said: "The acquisition of any knowledge whatever is always useful to the intellect, because it will be able to banish the useless things and retain those that are good. For nothing can be either loved or hated unless it is first known."⁴² And, no one better perhaps, could have epitomized this sentiment than Alexander Pope, saying:

Like varying winds, by other passions tost,

This drives them constant to a certain coast.

Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please,

Or oft (more strong than all) the love of ease;

Thro' life 'tis followed, ev'n at life's expence;

The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,

The monk's humility, the hero's pride,

All, all alike, find reason on their side.

Th' eternal art educing good from ill,

Grafts on this passion our best principle:

'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd,

Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd;

The dross cements what else were too refin'd,

And in one int'rest body acts with mind.⁴³

Although one could argue that Tennyson was a bit more brief yet just as impactful, with sayings such as:

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,—

These three alone lead life to sovereign power.⁴⁴

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.⁴⁵

Let knowledge grow from more to more.⁴⁶

Who loves not knowledge? Who shall rail

Against her beauty? May she mix

With men and prosper! Who shall fix

Her pillars? Let her work prevail.⁴⁷

Charles Caleb Colton, like Pope, had an awesome faculty for getting at the root of expression and feeling: but, instead of doing it in verse, surpassed all his contemporaries with his elegant prose. He reported of knowledge in such ways as:

"Knowledge indeed is as necessary as light, and in this coming age most fairly promises to be as common as water, and as free as air. But as it has been wisely ordained that light should have no colour, water no taste, and air no odour, so knowledge also should be equally pure, and without admixture. If it comes to us through the medium of prejudice, it will be discoloured; through the channels of custom, it will be adulterated; through the gothic walls of the college, or of the cloister, it will smell of the lamp."

"I have first considered whether it be worth while to say a thing at all, before I have taken any trouble to say it well; knowing that words are but air, and that both are capable of much condensation. Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent."

"It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has farther to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance."

and

"Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning; since she mistakes the nonage of things for their virility; and her creed is, that darkness is increased by the accession of light; that the world grows younger by age; and that knowledge and experience are diminished by a constant and uninterrupted accumulation."

As I said, just a phenom of explication, and beyond elegant in rhythm and impact. The force of a single sentence, enough to make the best of scribblers shutter and quake with reverence.

Does one not see? Is the reading of great works of genius not the most profitable thing one can do with their time? I really do wish our educational system valued the arts and humanities on equal par with the sciences. One is for the advancement of economics and the improvement of citizens well-beings; while the other is for the fulfillment of our soul. Advances in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics make the world go round; while advances in the humane arts make contemplation and satisfaction abound. Who is to say one is superior to the other? Why should we even consider valuing one over the other. Are they not both integral to the fabric of a healthy commonwealth? Should wisdom and culture not stem from the arts and humanities; while economic and material well-being from the sciences? Cicero talks of it as such: "There is no doubt that, as the law should correct wickedness and promote goodness, a code of conduct may be derived from it. That is why wisdom is the mother of all good things; the love of her gives us the word ‘philosophy’ from the Greek. Of all the gifts which the immortal gods have bestowed on human life none is richer or more abundant or more desirable. In addition to everything else, she alone taught us this most difficult lesson, namely to know ourselves—a precept of such power and significance that it was ascribed, not to any mortal, but to the god of Delphi. The person who knows himself will first of all realize that he possesses something divine, and he will compare his own inner nature to a kind of holy image placed within a temple. His thoughts and actions will always be worthy of that priceless gift of the gods; and when he inspects and tests himself thoroughly he will see how well he has been equipped by nature on entering life, and what implements he has for acquiring and obtaining wisdom. At the beginning he will have conceived in his mind and spirit dim perceptions, so to speak, of everything. When these have been illuminated with the guidance of wisdom, he now realizes that he has the makings of a good man, and for that very reason a happy one."⁴⁸ Through good books and actions can one be roused to the heights of excellence. One becomes able to contemplate various positions and hold their opinions with confidence. This relates to the commonwealth by raising an educated populace, full of wisdom, who, upon reading what has been said by the greatest of people from the greatest of cultures, can begin to formulate their own ideals that can then be worked towards. All one needs is a goal. When one has one, they know what meaning is. When meaning is achieved, work is produced: and when work is had, society as a whole benefits. All brought forth by the labor of a single idea, which rest perpetually in the back of the mind. Always calling upon the individual, desiring to be fulfilled. It is not enough to know the idea, but to put it in practice. To do what you know is good on your own volition, rather than having it coaxed out of you.

Caleb Colton, with usual profundity, tells us accurately that: "The peculiar superiority of talent over riches may be best discovered from hence—That the influence of talent will always be the greatest in that government which is the most pure, while the influence of riches will always be the greatest in that government which is the most corrupt. So that from the preponderance of talent we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration." The great American John Adams has said with complete correctness: "We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best."⁴⁹ And Macaulay, echoing Adams, said, "The end of government is the happiness of the people; and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the happiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government in which the middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only because the middle classes have no organ by which to make their sentiments known."⁵⁰ Elsewhere, James Madison said similarly that: "Justice is the end of Government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."⁵¹ Finally, Bertrand Russell, in expounding on Kant's political ethics epitomized it as, "...the end of government must be one, and the only single end compatible with justice is the good of the community."⁵² With all these things considered, does not a reading of the humanities contribute just as much to the happiness, unity, and justice of society than does the advancement of scientific technologies. What does a student of calculus have over someone reading Tolstoy's War and Peace when it comes to understanding ourselves? Absolutely nothing. In fact, one can argue that reading from a book as large as War and Peace from such a profound author as Tolstoy may have more to say on the matter. Reading promotes introspection, and from this lays the germ of societal progress. People must understand themselves before they can understand what promotes the happiness of their fellow citizens; for there is no art more difficult than that of managing a large commonwealth.

What good does all this reading do one may ask. I quote one of the best English prose stylist, Richard Steele, who said, "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated; by the other, virtue, which is the health of the mind, is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed."⁵³ Now, one may object to these great designs as Oliver Goldsmith does, saying: "A youth who has thus spent his life among books, new to the world, and unacquainted with man but by philosophic information, may be considered as a being whose mind is filled with the vulgar errors of the wise: utterly unqualified for a journey through life, yet confident of his own skill in the direction, he sets out with confidence, blunders on with vanity, and finds himself at last undone."⁵⁴ But I would reply with a great saying from Samuel Johnson: "Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge."⁵⁵ Indeed, as Emerson recommended, find that which is your own. Do your own work and I shall know you. Gaze upon the vast seas of ink, and think to what greatness is to be had within them, dear God, the unending furnishings of the most sublime wisdom. That reading which nourishes our soul and makes us better than we were before. Day by day, we make our way, and seek the great divine within. These are the sentiments by which we shall all aspire to. As Goethe said: "I augur better of a youth who is wandering on a path of his own than of many who are walking aright upon paths which are not theirs."⁵⁶ And elsewhere, "What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing useless!"⁵⁷ And Shakespeare, saying better than anyone before or since: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"⁵⁸ Let man strike out his own path, let him seek what is great and the great shall find him. You will recognize greatness when you hear something that moves your spirit; you will search within and be amazed. You must set your own fire and watch over it till it blazes. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear should do so, as to fill your life with the greatness of experience, the mistress of all genius, and imagination, the courtesan of all creative people. Let the achievements of the great be always upon your mind: let them find you, inspire you, to aspire to, the greatest heights you are capable of! Do this, dear reader, and you shall find yourself satisfied with all you have gone through.

To cap this off, I wish to speak, very briefly but in more detail than before, on my method of accumulating such a vast amount of material in so short a time. Firstly, this work would have never been undertaken had I not fallen in love with good literature and writing; which began the instant I read the first sentences of Cardano's autobiography, "The Book of My Life." I found within that book a life lived to the fullest: love, hate, poverty, genius, accomplishment, riches, happiness, philosophy, maxims, prudence, and all around incomparable greatness. I thought to myself if all writers of the renaissance wrote like Cardano, who knows how much wisdom and knowledge is spread out along that black sea of erudition. From henceforth, I sought and gathered, little by little, and made way through the annals of intellectual greatness. Progress was slow, but I always had Proverbs 13:11 before my mind: "Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labor shall increase." Likewise, Proverbs 10:2 had it: "Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death." The wisdom of the ancients shall be the most pure, good, and virtuous for the improvement of our character; and all shall be gotten justly, correctly, and honorably. For it is as Friedrich Schiller said, "Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us. There does not live on earth the man, be his station what it may, that I despise myself compared with him. Man is made great or little by his own will." Over time, this desire swelled to a great obsession: and when leisure was afforded me, I dove headlong into that great abundance of letters, phrases, adages, and maxims that I said to myself: "now I know what it is like to be in envy of the great." I found diction of such profound excellence that I thoroughly wondered why anyone bothers to even write. But I have explained already why we write anyway, and why these quotations are worth their weight in gold.

For those who may ask: "who is the greatest of all writers that you have compiled," I would say for verse, in no particular order: Shakespeare, Pope, Dante, Milton, Dryden, Dickinson, Whitman, and Fulke Greville. As for prose, again in no particular order: Emerson, Montaigne, Thomas Browne, John Selden, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Hugo Grotius, Gerolamo Cardano, Francis Bacon, Erasmus, Leon Battista Alberti, Thomas Jefferson, Goethe, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Friedrich Nietzsche, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and Edmund Burke. I have read more prose than verse, and so I list more of what I know.

I have also been helped by many predecessors; those long forgotten pedants and lovers of good diction; those men who cannot help quoting a wise saying in every appropriate situation. The men who see what is good, and desire to compile all that is like it. I know this is what I feel anyway. I call to mind men such as: Aristotle, Erasmus, Grotius, Selden, Bacon, Leibniz, Mirandola, Scaliger, Hegel, Antonio Magliabechi, Pierre Bayle, and the greatest compiler of them all, the father of Lexicography, Samuel Johnson. Such men, as Emerson said: "...sweep the whole horizon of learning."⁵⁹ As for more modern compilers that I have taken from liberally, I count: John Bartlett's famous Familiar Quotations, 10th ed; Rev. James Wood's 1899 Dictionary of Quotations; Charles Noel Douglas' 1917 Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical; Samuel Austin Allibone's 1880 Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay; and Lastly, Edward Parsons Day's 1884 Day's collacon: an encyclopaedia of prose quotations.

At first I was unsure about taking quotations from books that were compiled by other people, since most of them did not have corresponding citations, the exception being Bartlett's book; and also the fact that I wanted to personally read and compile every quote from all my chosen authors. However, I felt much better after reading the following quotations from men who have done what I have already done but with more grace. Allibone, in his preface to Prose quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, says: "I HAVE now the satisfaction of presenting to the public the third of the series of Dictionaries of English Literature originally projected about a quarter of a century ago. In these works I have had the great advantage of profiting by the labors of my predecessors in the same fertile fields. The Dictionaries of Johnson, Webster, and Worcester, and the excellent compilation of Henry Southgate entitled Many Thoughts of Many Minds, First Series, have furnished me with many quotations; but the most valuable portions of the present volume have been derived from the Tatlers and Spectators of Addison and Steele, The Rambler of Dr. Johnson, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, Edmund Burke, Robert Hall, and Montaigne, and the vigorous, brilliant, and thoughtful Essays of Lord Macaulay."⁶⁰ Who would of guessed, a compiler of quotations taking from the labors of others.

Parsons Day says similarly: "The immortal JOHNSON has wisely remarked, that 'he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literature of his own age; he that collects these is very laudably employed, as he facilitates the progress of others, and by making that easy of attainment which is already written, may give some adventurous mind leisure for new thoughts and original designs.' In procuring the material for this work, the Compiler has met with many publications whose antiquated style and quaintness of character have invested them with more than ordinary interest, and of which no mention is made in any dictionary of authors..."⁶¹ Further he says: "In preparing for publication a work of this magnitude, the Compiler had occasion to call to his assistance numerous literary friends, to whom he now takes this opportunity of returning his sincere and grateful acknowledgments for valuable services rendered. As history has sometimes presented instances of a ruler, who not possessing a very high order of regal talent, has, nevertheless, encircled his administration with a halo of glory by gathering around him men of eminence who could discharge the duties of ministers, cabinet officers, and ambassadors, with marked ability, and by so doing, has taken upon himself credit for an able reign, so does the Compiler of this volume give vent to his egotism in proudly boasting of his abilities—not to write, but to appreciate the writings of others. Some years ago, it was his good fortune to meet Mr. James Ellis, who had prepared a volume for publication, under the title of Laconia; or, Gems of Literature, Original and Selected. This production contained so many quotations that were adapted to this work, that an arrangement was at once entered into by which the manuscript was secured, and the author himself engaged to assist in completing the Collacon."⁶²

As one could see, I think I am on firm ground to extract quotations from wherever I please without having to worry about the citation or origin of the work originally. None of my predecessors made a fetish about such things. They simply extracted and compiled what they deemed appreciable. We all receive assistance in one way or another, some more so by their own efforts, other by good fortune; but no one is without some helping hand or guiding example by which to go off of. Look at what Johnson says regarding his extractions for the dictionary:

"Many quotations serve no other purpose, than that of proving the bare existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness than those which are to teach their structures and relations. My purpose was to admit no testimony of living authors, that I might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my contemporaries might have reason to complain; nor have I departed from this resolution, but when some performance of uncommon excellence excited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name. So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have studiously endeavoured to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of English undefiled, as the pure sources of genuine diction. Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recal it, by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idioms."⁶³

Further, he says in an earlier work:

"In citing authorities, on which the credit of every part of this work must depend, it will be proper to observe some obvious rules, such as of preferring writers of the first reputation to those of an inferior rank, of noting the quotations with accuracy, and of selecting, when it can be conveniently done, such sentences, as, besides their immediate use, may give pleasure or instruction by conveying some elegance of language, or some precept of prudence, or piety.

It has been asked, on some occasions, who shall judge the judges? And since with regard to this design, a question may arise by what authority the authorities are selected, it is necessary to obviate it, by declaring that many of the writers whose testimonies will be alleged, were selected by Mr. Pope, of whom I may be justified in affirming, that were he still alive, solicitous as he was for the success of this work, he would not be displeased that I have undertaken it."⁶⁴

It truly resembles what Edward P. Day says regarding his own method of extracting quotations:

"WITH the conviction that there is no richer treasure than a collection of the beautiful thoughts and maxims of the world's literati and distinguished men, the Compiler offers the present work for public approval. The brilliant passages of the most eminent writers, the wise sayings of the great philosophers, and the sparkling phrases of celebrated orators—among which many fine intellectual gems, and many noble and useful truths are found—have been accumulating for ages; and in this book-making generation, and among so large a number of collectors, have become so colossal in mass by accretion, as to almost bewilder a compiler in making his selections; consequently, it is only by large experience, great mental labor, and years of tedious research, that one is able to acquire that adequate skill, judgment, and taste, requisite for a task of this character and magnitude."⁶⁵

Emphasizing further: "...on looking over the vast field of literature, from the dark ages—the midnight of the human mind—up to the early part of the seventeenth century, it was found that a number of excellent writers on theology, moral philosophy, and belles-lettres, had been almost entirely forgotten by our bibliographers; these works were carefully examined, and many beautiful extracts obtained, and it is hoped a further service rendered in the endeavor to resuscitate the names of their authors. In other words: 'I have culled a garland of flowers, and the only thing I can call my own is the string that binds them.' But to cull a still larger garland of flowers from the wide garden of the world’s literature, where so many have been gathered during the past two hundred years, was found to be no easy task; and more gigantic a labor did it appear to attempt to collect the whole of these choice flowers—many of which are now withered and dead—and select from them those that have been made beautiful by age, and those which are still beautiful by youth, and form them into a bouquet that would be more lasting in its fragrance and more glorious in prismatic hues. Yet not only has such been the aim of the Compiler, but he has also explored ground never before traversed; and from the wild-woods and hedge-rows of literature, of every nation and of every clime, he has gathered some of the rarest and some of the sweetest blossoms. The most precious jewels are found in out-of-the-way places, and often amid rude surroundings, yet, nevertheless, they are just as beautiful as those set in the crown of a king. Thus it is with the jewels of literature; as among a heap of oyster shells may be found one pearl which glorifies all of them by its brilliancy, so among the writings of the most obscure may be found, at least, one thought that is worth preserving for its purity and beauty."⁶⁶

Finally, he remarked, "It differs entirely, and is far in advance of other books of quotations of smaller dimensions, not only in a much greater number of extracts and diversity of topics, but in grandeur of conception, unity of plan, and simplicity of classification. It has not been compiled, like many others, at moments of leisure, nor has it been gathered together during several years of desultory reading; but it has been the result of research of an entire lifetime, devoted to the avowed purpose of giving to the public an encyclopedia of prose quotations from the most eminent authors and celebrated men of all ages and of all nations, forming a rich casket of literary pearls— the best impressions of the best minds— the lustre of which will never grow dim; thus making a volume of noble thoughts in noble language and well chosen words— for

Words are things; and a small drop of ink,

Falling like dew upon a thought, produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."⁶⁷

One sees from these examples that most great compilers did not formulate their conceptions in a vacuum, but rather were guided by the power and impact of the quote in question. They allowed for their feeling to interpret the wisdom, and from there they collected overtime. And, as the Latin proverb goes: "Multa modica faciunt unum satis [The many small things soon make one of size]." And grow in size most great dictionaries do. Let them follow that saying of Macaulay, "...to extract the philosophy of history, to direct our judgment of events and men, to trace the connection of causes and effects, and to draw from the occurrences of former times general lessons of moral and political wisdom, has become the business of a distinct class of writers."⁶⁸

If my efforts have availed me of anything, dear reader, it is that I have, as John Bartlett said: "...gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own."⁶⁹ For mankind's sake, for life's sake, for geniuses' sake, let the words of our forefathers be of inspiration to us all, let it make us better in character and in action. May we allow it to beautify our writings and alter our minds in a positive way. Let it forever kindle in the flame of ambition, to desire to rise to such heights that eclipse even Mount Parnassus itself; where the muses dance around Apollo, and where they forever inspire us in times of need. What more has to be written? I leave you with a single quotation by Goethe that embodies this entire work: "Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations."⁷⁰

End of preface.

Here begins our book of wisdom, a book to which we turn in the greatest moments of dread, when we seek hope in a world that seems hopeless. May you be fulfilled and changed by the words of our forefathers, and may you find solace in your journey through this sea of erudition that we present to you here.

Ability

Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result.

• Abraham Lincoln, The House Divided speech (1858).

The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders.

• Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Major General Joseph Hooker (26 January 1863).

It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power.

• Abraham Lincoln, Letter (4 April 1864) to Albert G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth (recounting their conversation of 26 March 1864). Abraham Lincoln Online.; Manuscript at The Library of Congress; also in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, p. 281.

I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.

• Abraham Lincoln, Letter (4 April 1864) to Albert G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth (recounting their conversation of 26 March 1864). Abraham Lincoln Online.; Manuscript at The Library of Congress; also in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, p. 281.

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.

• Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Part 5, Chapter 1.

First you must have faith in an eternal world independent of you; then you must have faith in your ability to perceive it, and finally you must try to explain it by means of concepts or mathematical constructions. But don't always accept traditional concepts without reexamining them. Even overthrow my relativity theory, if you find a better one.... You must believe that the world was created as a unified whole which is comprehensible to man. Of course, it's going to take an infinitely long time to investigate this unified creation. But to me that is the highest and most sacred duty—unifying physics. Simplicity is the criterion of the universe.

• Albert Einstein, p. 139 - Einstein and the Poet (1983).

A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value.

• Albert Einstein, Ideas And Opinions (ed. Broadway Books, 2010).

The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.

• Albert Einstein, Ideas And Opinions (ed. Broadway Books, 2010).

God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.

• Anselm of Canterbury, Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.

Dramatic ability is a natural gift, and can hardly be systematically taught. The principles of good diction can be so taught, and therefore we have men of ability in this direction too, who win prizes in their turn, as well as those speakers who excel in delivery-speeches of the written or literary kind owe more of their effect to their direction than to their thought.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 3, ch 1, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

Now our predecessors have left the subject of legislation to us unexamined; it is perhaps best, therefore, that we should ourselves study it, and in general study the question of the constitution, in order to complete to the best of our ability our philosophy of human nature.

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk 10, part 9, Translated by W. D. Ross.

It is easier to get one or a few of good sense, and of ability to legislate and adjudge, than to get many.

• Aristotle, Treatise on Rhetoric (ed. 1853).

People of very brilliant ability think little of admitting their errors and weaknesses, or of letting others see them. They look upon them as something for which they have duly paid; and instead of fancying that these weaknesses are a disgrace to them they consider they are doing them an honour. This is especially the case when the errors are of the kind that hang together with their qualities—conditiones sine quibus non—or, as George Sand said, les défauts de ses vertus.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism/Further Psychological Observations."

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. Hence it is just as becoming in the latter to make no secret of the respect they bear themselves, and no disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual power, as it is in the former to be modest. Valerius Maximus gives some very neat examples of this in his chapter on self-confidence, de fiducia sui.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism/Further Psychological Observations."

For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life, Chapter IV, Section 1.

O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God; to you I sigh by day and by night. And when I first knew you, you raised me up so that I could see that there was something to see and that I still lacked the ability to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, blazing upon me with your rays, and I trembled in love and in dread...

• Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions.

There are many who want to judge style and discuss the rhythms of language and the question of imitation, yet cannot explain to me what style and rhythm are, or how to define imitation, or why things taken from Homer or someone else read so well in Virgil that they seem improved rather than plagiarized. Perhaps the reason for this is that I am not capable of understanding them. But since it is a convincing proof of whether a man understands something that he has the ability to teach it, I fear that they understand it very little themselves, and that they praise both Virgil and Cicero because they are aware that many others praise them and not because they recognize the difference between them and the rest.

• Baldesar Castiglione, How to Achieve True Greatness, Bk 1, pg. 32.

In men of great ability the extremes are kept far asunder, so that there is a long distance between them, and they always keep in the middle of their caution, so that they take time to break through it. It is easier to avoid such affairs than to come well out of them. They test our judgment; it is better to avoid them than to conquer in them. One affair of honour leads to another, and may lead to an affair of dishonour. There are men so constituted by nature or by nation that they easily enter upon such obligations. But for him that walks by the light of reason, such a matter requires long thinking over. There is more valour needed not to take up the affair than to conquer in it. When there is one fool ready for the occasion, one may excuse oneself from being the second.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

There is no need to show your ability before every one. Employ no more force than is necessary. Let there be no unnecessary expenditure either of knowledge or of power. The skilful falconer only flies enough birds to serve for the chase. If there is too much display to-day there will be nothing to show to-morrow. Always have some novelty wherewith to dazzle. To show something fresh each day keeps expectation alive and conceals the limits of capacity.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Renew your brilliance. ’Tis the privilege of the Phœnix. Ability is wont to grow old, and with it fame. The staleness of custom weakens admiration, and a mediocrity that's new often eclipses the highest excellence grown old. Try therefore to be born again in valour, in genius, in fortune, in all. Display startling novelties, rise afresh like the sun every day. Change too the scene on which you shine, so that your loss may be felt in the old scenes of your triumph, while the novelty of your powers wins you applause in the new.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Know what is wanting in yourself. Many would have been great personages if they had not had something wanting without which they could not rise to the height of perfection. It is remarkable with some that they could be much better if they could he better in something. They do not perhaps take themselves seriously enough to do justice to their great abilities; some are wanting in geniality of disposition, a quality which their entourage soon find the want of, especially if they are in high office. Some are without organising ability, others lack moderation. In all such cases a careful man may make of habit a second nature.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Original and out-of-the-way views are signs of superior ability. We do not think much of a man who never contradicts us that is no sign he loves us, but rather that he loves himself. Do not be deceived by flattery, and thereby have to pay for it: rather condemn it. Besides you may take credit for being censured by some, especially if they are those of whom the good speak ill. On the contrary, it should disturb us if our affairs please every one, for that is a sign that they are of little worth. Perfection is for the few.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Make use of the novelty of your position; for men are valued while they are new. Novelty pleases all because it is uncommon, taste is refreshed, and a brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence. Ability wears away by use and becomes old. However, know that the glory of novelty is short-lived: after four days respect is gone. Accordingly, learn to utilise the first fruits of appreciation, and seize during the rapid passage of applause all that can be put to use. For once the heat of novelty over, the passion cools and the appreciation of novelty is exchanged for satiety at the customary: believe that all has its season, which soon passes.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Display yourself. ’Tis the illumination of talents: for each there comes an appropriate moment; use it, for not every day comes a triumph. There are some dashing men who make much show with a little, a whole exhibition with much. If ability to display them is joined to versatile gifts, they are regarded as miraculous. There are whole nations given to display: the Spanish people take the highest rank in this. Light was the first thing to cause Creation to shine forth. Display fills up much, supplies much, and gives a second existence to things, especially when combined with real excellence. Heaven that grants perfection, provides also the means of display; for one without the other were abortive. Skill is however needed for display. Even excellence depends on circumstances and is not always opportune. Ostentation is out of place when it is out of time. More than any other quality it should be free of any affectation. This is its rock of offence, for it then borders on vanity and so on contempt: it must be moderate to avoid being vulgar, and any excess is despised by the wise. At times it consists in a sort of mute eloquence, a careless display of excellence, for a wise concealment is often the most effective boast, since the very withdrawal from view piques curiosity to the highest. ’Tis a fine subtlety too not to display one's excellence all at one time, but to grant stolen glances at it, more and more as time goes on. Each exploit should be the pledge of a greater, and applause at the first should only die away in expectation of its sequel.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892].

Many authors have acknowledged the importance of a good education, that youth was the season to feed the human heart with wholesome diet; but they have not felt, that a good education is incompatible, nay, impossible, with the superstition of man, since this commences with giving his mind a false bias: that it is equally inconsistent with arbitrary government, because this always dreads lest lie should become enlightened, and is ever sedulous to render him servile, mean, contemptible, and cringing; that it is incongruous with laws that are not founded in equity, that are frequently bottomed on injustice; that it cannot obtain with those received customs that are opposed to good sense; that it cannot exist whilst public opinion is unfavourable to virtue; above all, that it is absurd to expect it from incapable instructors, from masters with weak minds, who have only the ability to infuse into their scholars those false ideas with which they are themselves infected.

• ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 11.”

That society who has not the ability, or who is not willing to procure man any one benefit, loses all its rights over him; Nature, when it has rendered his existence completely miserable, has in fact, ordered him to quit it: in dying he does no more than fulfil one of her decrees, as he did when he first drew his breath. To him who is fearless of death, there is no evil without a remedy; for him who refuses to die, there yet exists benefits which attach him to the world; in this case let him rally his powers--let him oppose courage to a destiny that oppresses him--let him call forth those resources with which Nature yet furnishes him; she cannot have totally abandoned him, while she yet leaves him the sensation of pleasure; the hopes of seeing a period to his pains.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 14.”

Sovereigns, nobles, men of wealth, appear to be happy, only because they possess the ability, are masters of the motives sufficient to determine a great number of individuals to occupy themselves with their respective felicity.

• ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 15.”

It will be insisted that if a statue or a watch were shown to a savage, who had never before seen either, he would not be able to prevent himself from acknowledging that these things were the works of some intelligent agent of greater ability, possessing more industry than himself: it will be concluded from thence, that we are in like manner obliged to acknowledge that the universe, that man, that the various phenomena, are the works of an agent, whose intelligence is more comprehensive, whose power far surpasses our own. Granted: who has ever doubted it? the proposition is self-evident; it cannot admit of even a cavil. Nevertheless we reply, in the first place, that it is not to be doubted that nature is extremely powerful; diligently industrious: we admire her activity every time we are surprised by the extent, every time we contemplate the variety, every time we behold those complicated effects which are displayed in her works; or whenever we take the pains to meditate upon them: nevertheless, she is not really more industrious in one of her works than she is in another; she is not fathomed with more ease in those we call her most contemptible productions, than she is in her most sublime efforts: we no more understand how she has been capable of producing a stone or a metal, than the means by which she organized a head like that of the illustrious Newton.

• ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 2, Chapter 5.”

Until this epoch, so desirable for humanity, shall arrive, the principles of naturalism will be adopted only by a small number of liberal-minded men, who shall dive below the surface; these cannot flatter themselves either with making proselytes, or having a great number of approvers: on the contrary, they will meet with zealous adversaries, with ardent contemners, even in those persons who upon every other subject discover the most acute minds; display the most consummate knowledge. Those men who possess the greatest share of ability, as we have already observed, cannot always resolve to divorce themselves completely from their superstitious ideas; imagination, so necessary to splendid talents, frequently forms in them an insurmountable obstacle to the total extinction of prejudice; this depends much more upon the judgment than upon the mind. To this disposition, already so prompt to form illusions to them, is also to be joined the force of habit; to a great number of men, it would he wresting from them a portion of themselves to take away their superstitious notions; it would be depriving them of an accustomed aliment; plunging them into a dreadful vacuum: obliging their distempered minds to perish for want of exercise. Menage remarks, "that history speaks of very few incredulous women, or female atheists:" this is not surprising; their organization renders them fearful; their nervous system undergoes periodical variations; the education they receive disposes them to credulity. Those among them who have a sound constitution, who have a well ordered imagination, have occasion for chimeras suitable to occupy their leisure; above all, when the world abandons them, then superstitious devotion, with its attractive ceremonies, becomes either a business or an amusement.

• ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part II, Chapter 13.”

It has been shown, that those punishments which society, for its own preservation, has the right to inflict on those who disturb its harmony, are more substantive, more efficacious, more salutary in their effects, than all the distant torments held forth by the priests; they intervene a more immediate obstacle to the stubborn propensities of those obdurate wretches, who, insensible to the charms of virtue, are deaf to the advantages that spring from its practice, than can he opposed by the denunciations, held forth in an hereafter existence, which he is at the same moment taught may be avoided by repentance, that shall only take place when the ability to commit further wrong has ceased. In short, one would be led to think it obvious to the slightest reflection, that politics, founded upon the nature of man, upon the principles of society, armed with equitable laws, vigilant over morals, faithful in rewarding virtue, constant in visiting crime, would be more suitable to clothe ethics with respectability, to throw a sacred mantle over moral goodness, to lend stability to public virtue, than any authority that can be derived from contested systems, the conduct of whose professors frequently disgrace the doctrines they lay down, which after all seldom do more than restrain those whose mildness of temperament effectually prevents them from running into excess; those who, already given to justice, require no coercion. On the other hand, we have endeavoured to prove that nothing can be more absurd, nothing actually more dangerous, than attributing human qualities to the Divinity which cannot but choose to find themselves in a perpetual contradiction.

• ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part II, Chapter 8.”

His Aspect is sweetned with Humanity and Benevolence, and at the same Time emboldned with Resolution, equally free from a diffident Bashfulness and an unbecoming Assurance. The Consciousness of his own innate Worth and unshaken Integrity renders him calm and undaunted in the Presence of the most Great and Powerful, and upon the most extraordinary Occasions. His strict Justice and known Impartiality make him the Arbitrator and Decider of all Differences that arise for many Miles around him, without putting his Neighbours to the Charge, Perplexity and Uncertainty of Law-Suits. He always speaks the Thing he means, which he is never afraid or asham’d to do, because he knows he always means well; and therefore is never oblig’d to blush and feel the Confusion of finding himself detected in the Meanness of a Falshood. He never contrives Ill against his Neighbour, and therefore is never seen with a lowring suspicious Aspect. A mixture of Innocence and Wisdom makes him ever seriously chearful. His generous Hospitality to Strangers according to his Ability, his Goodness, his Charity, his Courage in the Cause of the Oppressed, his Fidelity in Friendship, his Humility, his Honesty and Sincerity, his Moderation and his Loyalty to the Government, his Piety, his Temperance, his Love to Mankind, his Magnanimity, his Publick-spiritedness, and in fine, his Consummate Virtue, make him justly deserve to be esteem’d the Glory of his Country.

• Benjamin Franklin, “The Busy-Body, No. 3, 18 February 1729,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0037.

Many of the first Settlers of these Provinces, were Men who had received a good Education in Europe, and to their Wisdom and good Management we owe much of our present Prosperity. But their Hands were full, and they could not do all Things. The present Race are not thought to be generally of equal Ability: For though the American Youth are allow’d not to want Capacity; yet the best Capacities require Cultivation, it being truly with them, as with the best Ground, which unless well tilled and sowed with profitable Seed, produces only ranker Weeds.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, [October 1749],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0166.

In studying Law or Physick, or any other Art or Science, by which you propose to get your Livelihood, though you find it at first hard, difficult and unpleasing, use Diligence, Patience and Perseverance; the Irksomness of your Task will thus diminish daily, and your Labour shall finally be crowned with Success. You shall go beyond all your Competitors who are careless, idle or superficial in their Acquisitions, and be at the Head of your Profession. Ability will command Business, Business Wealth; and Wealth an easy and honourable Retirement when Age shall require it.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1757,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0030.

The Idea of what is true Merit, should also be often presented to Youth, explain’d and impress’d on their Minds, as consisting in an Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends and Family; which Ability is (with the Blessing of God) to be acquir’d or greatly encreas’d by true Learning; and should indeed be the great Aim and End of all Learning.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, [October 1749],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0166.

Bacon's inductive method is faulty through insufficient emphasis on hypothesis. He hoped that mere orderly arrangement of data would make the right hypothesis obvious, but this is seldom the case. As a rule, the framing of hypotheses is the most difficult part of scientific work, and the part where great ability is indispensable.

• Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster, 2007. Book 3, Ch 7, pg. 544-545.

We cannot even see an advocate in his robe and with his cap on his head, without a favourable opinion of his ability.

• Blaise Pascal, "Thoughts/Section 2."

As to your part in this crisis, my dear Cicero, it is my strongest advice and request to you, not to desert yourself: Do not distrust your ability, and your ability will not disappoint you; believe you can remedy our heavy evils, and you will remedy them. Our miseries want no encrease: Prevent, therefore, by your vigilance, any new accession.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 23." Written by Thomas Gordon. Note: From Brutus to Cicero.

The same author says, that it would have lessened his concern, had he seen such great wickedness perpetrated by men of great qualities. But his grief had not this mitigation: For, says he, wretched creatures with little souls, whose whole genius lay in their tongue and whose utmost talent and ability was to prate glibly, exercised with insolence that power which they had acquired by chance, or by the sloth of others.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 27." Written by Thomas Gordon.

What have the people in any monarchical government ever gained by the conquests made by their prince, but to be made slaves; or if they were slaves before, worse slaves, and to have their chains rivetted yet faster? For, besides that these conquests give him a pretence and an ability to keep more troops, and consequently increase his power over them; the conquered nation will find a sort of a revenge in joining to reduce their new masters to the same wretched condition with themselves, and perhaps find an opportunity of conquering the conquerors. One nation will be played upon another, and neither will be trusted to the guard of their own countrymen; but the soldiers of one country will be quartered upon the other, and kept at a great distance from home, lest by constant conversation with their relations, friends, and neighbours, they should, contrary to their duty, warp towards the love and interest of their country: And indeed in most countries where troops are kept, they are always removed from place to place, to prevent their friendship and correspondence with the natives.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 93." Written by Thomas Gordon.

For our country did not give us life and nurture unconditionally, without expecting to receive in return, as it were, some maintenance from us; nor did it engage simply to serve our convenience, providing a safe haven for our leisure and a quiet place for our relaxation. No, it reserved the right to appropriate for its own purpose the largest and most numerous portions of our loyalty, ability, and sagacity, leaving to us for our private use only what might be surplus to its needs.

• Cicero, The Republic, bk 1.

What power, what office, what kingdom can be more desirable than the ability to look down on all things human, ranking them lower than wisdom, and never turn over in one’s mind anything except what is divine and eternal, or the conviction that, while others are called men, only those who are skilled in the specifically human arts are worthy of the name? That remark of Plato’s (or whoever made it) strikes me as very apt. When he had been driven by a storm at sea to an unknown land and cast up on a lonely shore, and the others were in terror because they knew nothing of the place, he is supposed to have noticed some geometric figures drawn in the sand. On seeing them he cried ‘Take heart! I see the traces of men!’ He drew this conclusion, evidently, not from any crops which he saw growing in the fields, but from the signs of intellectual activity. That is why, Tubero, I have always valued learning, and educated men, and those interests of yours.

• Cicero, The Republic, bk 1. Said by Scipio.

If, however, a free people chooses the men to whom it will entrust itself, and if, with a genuine desire for security, it chooses only the best men, then without a doubt the security of such states depends on the policies of aristocrats, especially as nature has decreed not only that men of superior character and ability should be in charge of the less endowed, but also that the latter should willingly obey their superiors.

• Cicero, The Republic, bk 1. Said by Scipio.

Everyone agreed to this; so he continued: Have we ever heard of any state with so splendid and famous a beginning as this city founded by Romulus? He was the son of Mars—let’s not argue with a popular tradition which is not only ancient but also wisely transmitted by our forefathers, namely, that great public servants should be deemed divine by birth as well as in ability. Romulus, then, is said to have been exposed at birth on the banks of the Tiber, along with his brother Remus, on the orders of Amulius, King of Alba, who feared the overthrow of his kingdom. There he was suckled by an animal from the forest before being rescued by herdsmen, who brought him up as an agricultural labourer. They say that when he grew up he was so far ahead of the others in physical strength and force of character that all the people who lived in that part of the countryside where the capital stands today willingly and cheerfully accepted his leadership. Putting himself at the head of their forces (to move, now, from legend to history) he is supposed to have crushed Alba Longa, a strong and formidable city at that time, and to have put King Amulius to death.

• Cicero, The Republic, bk 2. Said by Scipio.

… (Plato) strove to discover and defend (justice), the other (Aristotle) filled four pretty hefty books on that very subject. I never expected anything important or impressive from Chrysippus, who argues in his usual style, investigating every problem through the function of words rather than the weight of things. It was the aim of those heroic souls to raise up that virtue from the ground—that virtue which, when it occurs, is the most generous and open-handed of all, which loves everyone better than itself, and whose raison d’etre is to secure other people’s welfare rather than its own—and to set it close to wisdom on that heavenly throne. Certainly they did not lack such good intentions; what other motive or what possible purpose did they have for writing? Nor did they lack intellectual ability (in that respect they were supreme). But the weakness of their case was too much for their good intentions and their powers of expression. For the justice which we are considering is a political phenomenon, not an element in nature. If it were part of nature, like hot and cold or bitter and sweet, then just and unjust would be the same for everyone.

• Cicero, The Republic, bk 3. Said by Philus.

But of all the issues dealt with in philosophical debates surely nothing is more vital than the clear realization that we are born for justice, and that what is just is based, not on opinion, but on nature. This will at once become clear if you examine the society of men and their relations to one another. Now there is no single thing that is so similar to, so like, anything else as all of us are like one another. If corrupt habits and foolish opinions did not twist and turn aside our feeble minds from their original paths, no individual would be more like himself than everyone would be like everyone else. Thus, however one defines man, the same definition applies to us all. This is sufficient proof that there is no essential difference within mankind. If there were, the same definition would not cover everyone. Reason in fact—the one thing in which we are superior to the beasts, which enables us to make valid deductions, to argue, refute our opponents, debate, solve problems, draw conclusions—that certainly is common to us all. While it may vary in what it teaches, it is constant in its ability to learn. For the same things are grasped by the senses of all, and those things that act on the senses act on the senses of all alike; and those rudimentary perceptions that are impressed on the mind (the perceptions I mentioned above) are impressed alike on all minds. Speech, which interprets the mind, uses different languages but expresses the same ideas. Nor is there any member of any nation who cannot attain moral excellence by using nature as his guide.

• Cicero, The Laws, bk 1. Said by Marcus.

Personally, I am always very nervous when I begin to speak. Every time I make a speech I feel I am submitting to judgment, not only about my ability but my character and honor. I am afraid of seeming either to promise more than I can perform, which suggests complete irresponsibility, or to perform less than I can, which suggests bad faith and indifference.

• Brinkhof, Tim. 2022. “Learn Public Speaking from Cicero, the Roman Senator Who Defied Julius Caesar.” Big Think. Big Think. November 3, 2022. https://bigthink.com/the-past/cicero-public-speaking/.

Constant practice devoted to one subject often prevails over both ability and skill.

• Cicero, Pro Balbo, section 45.

‌There were four things from which the Master was entirely free. He had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary predeterminations, no obstinacy, and no egoism.
A high officer asked Tsze-kung, saying, "May we not say that your Master is a sage? How various is his ability!" Tsze-kung said, "Certainly Heaven has endowed him unlimitedly. He is about a sage. And, moreover, his ability is various." The Master heard of the conversation and said, "Does the high officer know me? When I was young, my condition was low, and I acquired my ability in many things, but they were mean matters. Must the superior man have such variety of ability? He does not need variety of ability. Lao said, "The Master said, 'Having no official employment, I acquired many arts.'"

• Confucius, “The Internet Classics Archive | the Analects by Confucius.” Section 2 Part 9.

Yen Yuan, in admiration of the Master's doctrines, sighed and said, "I looked up to them, and they seemed to become more high; I tried to penetrate them, and they seemed to become more firm; I looked at them before me, and suddenly they seemed to be behind. The Master, by orderly method, skillfully leads men on. He enlarged my mind with learning, and taught me the restraints of propriety. When I wish to give over the study of his doctrines, I cannot do so, and having exerted all my ability, there seems something to stand right up before me; but though I wish to follow and lay hold of it, I really find no way to do so."

• Confucius, “The Internet Classics Archive | the Analects by Confucius.” Section 2 Part 9.

The Master said, "I will not be concerned at men's not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability."

• Confucius, “The Internet Classics Archive | the Analects by Confucius.” Section 3 Part 14.

The Master said, "The superior man is distressed by his want of ability. He is not distressed by men's not knowing him."

• Confucius, “The Internet Classics Archive | the Analects by Confucius.” Section 3 Part 15.

I have endeavoured to show that the ability to pay taxes depends, not on the gross money value of the mass of commodities, nor on the net money value of the revenue of capitalists and landlords, but on the money value of each man's revenue compared to the money value of the commodities which he usually consumes.

• David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition).

Let’s leave it, I’m telling you. For I know I could never teach you about these things and it’s much easier for you to teach me about music – things I don’t understand and you do. Dear Rameau, let’s talk music. Tell me how it comes about that with your ability to feel, to remember and deliver the finest passages of the grand masters with the enthusiasm which inspires you and which you transmit to others, you’ve done nothing worth anything.

• Denis Diderot, “Rameau’s Nephew.”

It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing. Still less is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done.

• Edgar Allan Poe, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (ed. 1849)

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.

• Edgar Allan Poe, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (ed. 1849)

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

• Edmund Burke, Speech in opening the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Third Day. Vol. x. p. 54.

A man full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it can never be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be out of all proportion predominant in the representation. It must be represented, too, in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be unequal. The great masses, therefore, which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations.

• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

In a free country, every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters; that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion upon them. They sift, examine, and discuss them. They are curious, eager, attentive, and jealous; and by making such matters the daily subjects of their thoughts and discoveries, vast numbers contract a very tolerable knowledge of them, and some a very considerable one. And this it is that fills free countries with men of ability in all stations. Whereas in other countries, none but men whose office calls them to it having much care or thought about public affairs, and not daring to try the force of their opinions with one another, ability of this sort is extremely rare in any station in life.

• Edmund Burke, Letters Of Edmund Burke: A Selection, edited With An Introduction by Harold J. Laski (1922).

If anything in my conversation has merited your regard, I think it must be the openness and freedom with which I commonly express my sentiments. You are too wise a man not to know that such freedom is not without its use; and that by encouraging it, men of true ability are enabled to profit by hints thrown out by understandings much inferior to their own, and which they who first produce them are, by themselves, unable to turn to the best account.

• Edmund Burke, To the Comte de Mercey, Aug. 1793.

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.

• “The Internet Classics Archive | the Enchiridion by Epictetus.” Translated by Elizabeth Carter.

Thus it appears, in what various ways nature has taught man her first great lesson of love and union. Nor was she content to allure the benevolence by the pleasurable sensations attending it; nor did she think she has done enough, when she rendered friendship pleasant; and therefore she determined to make it necessary. For this purpose, she so distributed among various men different endowments of the mind and the body, that no individual should be so completely furnished with all of them, but that he should want the occasional assistance of the lowest orders, and even of those who are most moderately furnished with ability. Nor did she give the same talents either in kind or in degree to all, evidently meaning that the inequality of her gifts should be ultimately equalized by a reciprocal interchange of good offices and mutual assistance. Thus, in different countries, she has caused different commodities to be produced, that expediency itself might introduce commercial intercourse.

• Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace. Open Court, 1521, p. 7.

Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.

• Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934).

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, originally published in Esquire magazine, 1936

Experience shows that even a great prince finds well-qualified ministers to be very rare. If the prince were not a good judge of men, or if he were too stingy to pay them well, no one would be surprised that such a shortage existed. But if a prince be free of these two defects, one may well wonder why well-qualified ministers should be rare, considering that men of all ranks are anxious to serve him; and that there are so many opportunities for reward from such service. This state of affairs will not seem strange to anyone who studies it carefully. For the minister of a prince-I speak now of those ministers who serve in important capacities- must needs be a man of extraordinary ability; and such men are rare. Furthermore, he must be a man of great loyalty and integrity; and such men are even rarer. And if it is hard to find men who fulfill one of these two prerequisites, how much harder to find those who fulfill both!

• Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. pg. 41. Series C, maxim 3.

Although the house of the Medici is powerful and has produced two popes, it is much harder for it to keep control of the Florentine state than it was for Cosimo, a private citizen. Aside from his extraordinary ability, Cosimo was aided by the conditions of his times. With the help of only a few men, he was able to take and keep control of the government, without displeasing the many, who did not yet know freedom. Indeed, in his day, the middle and lowest classes were able to better their conditions every time the strong quarreled, and every time a revolution took place.

• Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. pg. 51-52. Series C, maxim 38.

A man's good fortune is often his worst enemy, for it can make him wicked, lighthearted, insolent. A man's ability to bear good fortune, therefore, is a far better test of him than his ability to bear adversity.

• Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. pg. 82-83. Series C, maxim 164.

"Quod rem integram servat bonum, quod sine receptu est malum. Nam se recipere non pose impotentiæ autem bonum."[That which keeps a matter safe and entire is good; but what is destitute and unprovided of retreat is bad; for whereas all ability of acting is good, not to be able to withdraw one's self is a kind of impotency.]

• Francis Bacon, "The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Of the Colours of Good and Evil."

We take cunning for a sinister, or crooked wisdom: and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability. There be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot play well; so there are some that are good in canvasses and factions, that are otherwise weak men. Again, it is one thing to understand persons, and another thing to understand matters; for many are perfect in men's humours, that are not greatly capable of the real part of business, which is the constitution of one that hath studied men more than books. Such men are fitter for practice than for counsel, and they are good but in their own alley: turn them to new men, and they have lost their aim; so as the old rule, to know a fool from a wise man, "Mitte ambos nudos ad ignotos, et videbis [Send them both naked among strangers, and then you will see]," doth scarce hold for them.

• Francis Bacon, The Essays of Francis Bacon: The Fifty-Nine Essays, Complete. Adansonia Press, 2018. Of Cunning, pg. 41.

The speech of Themistocles, the Athenian, which was haughty and arrogant, in taking so much to himself, had been a grave and wise observation and censure, applied at large to others. Desired at a feast to touch a lute, he said, "He could not fiddle, but yet he could make a small town a great city." These words (holpen a little with a metaphor) may express two differing abilities in those that deal in business of estate; for, if a true survey be taken of counsellors and statesmen, there may be found (though rarely) those which can make a small state great, and yet cannot fiddle: as, on the other side, there will be found a great many that can fiddle very cunningly, but yet are so far from being able to make a small state great, as their gift lieth the other way; to bring a great and flourishing estate to ruin and decay: and, certainly, those degenerate arts and shifts, whereby many counsellors and governors gain both favour with their masters, and estimation with the vulgar, deserve no better name than fiddling; being things rather pleasing for the time, and graceful to themselves only, than tending to the weal and advancement of the state which they serve. There are also (no doubt) counsellors and governors which may be held sufficient, "negotiis pares [Equal to business]," able to manage affairs, and to keep them from precipices and manifest inconveniences; which, nevertheless, are far from the ability to raise and amplify an estate in power, means, and fortune.

• Francis Bacon, The Essays of Francis Bacon: The Fifty-Nine Essays, Complete. Adansonia Press, 2018. Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates, pg. 52.

For narrations and relations of particular actions, there were also to be wished a greater diligence therein; for there is no great action but hath some good pen which attends it. And because it is an ability not common to write a good history, as may well appear by the small number of them; yet if particularity of actions memorable were but tolerably reported as they pass, the compiling of a complete history of times might be the better expected, when a writer should arise that were fit for it: for the collection of such relations might be as a nursery garden, whereby to plant a fair and stately garden when time should serve.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

For athletic, I take the subject of it largely, that is to say, for any point of ability whereunto the body of man may be brought, whether it be of activity, or of patience; whereof activity hath two parts, strength and swiftness; and patience likewise hath two parts, hardness against wants and extremities, and endurance of pain or torment; whereof we see the practices in tumblers, in savages, and in those that suffer punishment. Nay, if there be any other faculty which falls not within any of the former divisions, as in those that dive, that obtain a strange power of containing respiration, and the like, I refer it to this part. Of these things the practices are known, but the philosophy that concerneth them is not much inquired; the rather, I think, because they are supposed to be obtained, either by an aptness of nature, which cannot be taught, or only by continual custom, which is soon prescribed which though it be not true, yet I forbear to note any deficiences; for the Olympian games are down long since, and the mediocrity of these things is for use; as for the excellency of them it serveth for the most part but for mercenary ostentation.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

Every body takes upon him to give a good Character of his own Honesty, but no body to speak well of his own Ability.

• François de La Rochefoucauld, The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty.

• Franz Kafka, Conversations with Kafka (1968)

Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.

• Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice (ed. Schocken, 2013).

The fifth and sixth centuries B.C. seemed to promise something more and higher even than they produced ; they stopped short at promising and announcing. And yet there is hardly a greater loss than the loss of a type, of a new, hitherto undiscovered highest possibility of the philosophic life. Even of the older type the greater number are badly transmitted; it seems to me that all philosophers, from Thales to Democritus, are remarkably difficult to recognise, but whoever succeeds in imitating these figures walks amongst specimens of the mightiest and purest type. This ability is certainly rare, it was even absent in those later Greeks, who occupied themselves with the knowledge of the older philosophy ; Aristotle, especially, hardly seems to have had eyes in his head when he stands before these great ones. And thus it appears as if these splendid philosophers had lived in vain, or as if they had only been intended to prepare the quarrelsome and talkative followers of the Socratic schools.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All-Too-Human.

A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of occupational activities, are compatible only with mediocre ability and aspiration; such callings would be out of place for exceptional men; the instincts which belong to them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as to anarchism. The fact that a man is publicly useful, that he is a wheel, a function, is evidence of a natural predisposition; it is not society, but the only sort of happiness that the majority are capable of, that makes them intelligent machines. To the mediocre mediocrity is a form of happiness; they have a natural instinct for mastering one thing, for specialization. It would be altogether unworthy of a profound intellect to see anything objectionable in mediocrity in itself. It is, in fact, the first prerequisite to the appearance of the exceptional: it is a necessary condition to a high degree of civilization. When the exceptional man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than he applies to himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of heart—it is simply his duty.... Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights.... What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry....

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist.

Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries — a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873).

That a person cannot and consequently will not defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes ; but we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good will for revenge whether it be a man or a woman.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Complete and Authorized English Translation (ed. 1910).

It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. On the contrary, there is not a single effect in nature, even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.

• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Day One.

Ability comprehends the power of doing in general, without specifying the quality or degree.

• George Crabbe, English Synonymes Explained, in Alphabetical Order (ed. 1816).

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious effort.

• Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For, Walden, 1854.

The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.

• Henry David Thoreau, Letters to Various Persons (ed. 1865).

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

• Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (ed. 1906).

No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.

• Henry David Thoreau, Letters to Various Persons (ed. 1865).

As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.

• Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (ed. 1906).

Consider well what your strength is equal to, and what exceeds your ability.

• Horace

If a thing is not now in the power of the promiser, but may be so at some future time; the obligation will remain in suspense. For the promise was only made under the expectation of some future ability to fulfil it. But if a person has a controul over the condition upon which the promise is made, to realise it or not, he lies under a moral obligation to use every endeavour to fulfil it. But in obligations of this kind also, the civil law, from obvious motives of general utility, occasionally interposes its authority to make them void: obligations, which the law of nature would have confirmed.

• Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (1901 ed.). M. Walter Dunne, 1625, pp. 138-139.

The sciences with which people concern themselves in cities, and which they acquire and pass on through instruction, are of two kinds: one that is natural to man and to which he is guided by his own ability to think, and a traditional kind that he learns from those who invented it.
The first kind comprises the philosophical sciences. They are the ones with which man can become acquainted through the very nature of his ability to think and to whose objects, problems, arguments, and methods of instruction he is guided by his human perceptions, so that he is made aware of the distinction between what is correct and what is wrong in them by his own speculation and research, inasmuch as he is a thinking human being.
The second kind comprises the traditional, conventional sciences. All of them depend upon information based on the authority of the given religious law. There is no place for the intellect in them, save that the intellect may be used in connection with them to relate problems of detail with basic principles. Particulars that constantly come into being are not included in the general tradition by the mere fact of its existence. Therefore, they need to be related (to the general principles) by some kind of analogical reasoning. However, such analogical reasoning is derived from the (traditional) information, while the character of the basic principle, which is traditional, remains valid (unchanged). Thus, analogical reasoning of this type reverts to being tradition itself, because it is derived from it.

• Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Book One, Chapter 6.

The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.

• James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838

There are some artists or men of ability whose intelligence is as extensive as the art or science they profess; they repay with interest, through their genius and inventive powers, what they borrowed from it and from its first principles; they stray from art to ennoble it, and deviate from its rules if they do not make use of them to attain the grand and the sublime; they walk alone and unaccompanied, but they soar very high and are very penetrating, always certain of the advantages sometimes to be obtained by irregularity, and assured of their success. Careful, timorous, and sedate minds not alone never obtain those advantages, but they do not admire them nor even understand them, and are much less likely to imitate them; they dwell peaceably within the compass of their sphere, go up to a certain point, which is the limit of their capacity and knowledge, but penetrate no farther, because they see nothing beyond it; they are at best but the first of a second class and excel in mediocrity.

• Jean de La Bruyere, The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

Telephus has some intelligence, but ten times less, if rightly computed, than he imagines he has; therefore, in everything he says, does, meditates, and projects, he goes ten times beyond his capacity, and thus always exceeds the true measure of his intellectual power and grasp. And this argument is well founded. He is limited by a barrier, as it were, and should be warned not to pass it; but he leaps over it, launches out of his sphere, and though he knows his own weakness, always displays it; he speaks about what he does not understand, or badly understands; attempts things above his power, and aims at what is too much for him; he thinks himself the equal of the very best men ever seen. Whatever is good and commendable in him is obscured by an affectation of doing something great and wonderful; people can easily see what he is not, but have to guess what he really is. He is a man who never measures his ability, and does not know himself; his true character is not to be satisfied with the one that suits him, and which is his own.

• Jean de La Bruyere, The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

A politician says: “Such a man is learned, and therefore not fit for business; I would not trust him to take an inventory of my wardrobe;” and he is quite right. Ossat, Ximenes, and Richelieu were learned, but were they men of ability and considered able ministers? “He understands Greek,” continues our statesman, “he is a pedant, a philosopher.” According to this argument an Athenian fruit-woman who probably spoke Greek was a philosopher, and the Bignons and Lamoignons are mere pedants, and nobody can doubt it, for they know Greek. How whimsical and crack-brained was the great, the wise, and judicious Antoninus to say: “That a people would be happy whose ruler was philosophising, or who should be governed by a philosopher or a scribbler.”

• Jean de La Bruyere, The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

Again, what shall I say of a certain talent for playing various games, and who can define it to me? Is there no need of foresight, shrewdness, or skill in playing ombre or chess? And if there is, how does it happen that we see men of hardly any intellect excel in these games, and others of great talent scarcely show moderate ability, and get confused and bewildered when they have to move a pawn or play a card?

• Jean de La Bruyere, The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

One should oblige everyone to the extent of one's ability. One often needs someone smaller than oneself.

• Jean de La Fontaine, Fables (1668–1679)

It is true that Newton found less opposition among his contemporaries. This may have been because he first became known through his geometrical discoveries, which were of unquestioned propriety and reality, and these discoveries inclined people to admire and praise him more gradually and somewhat without constraint; or because his superior ability imposed silence on envy, or finally—and this seems more difficult to believe—because he was dealing with a nation that was less unjust than others. He had the singular advantage of seeing his philosophy generally accepted in England during his life and of having all his compatriots for partisans and admirers. However, at that time it would have taken a good deal to make Europe likewise accept his works. Not only were they unknown in France, but scholastic philosophy was still dominant there when Newton had already overthrown Cartesian physics; the vortices were destroyed even before we considered adopting them. It took us as long to get over defending them as it did for us to accept them in the first place. It is necessary only to open our books in order to see with surprise that twenty years have not yet passed since we began to renounce Cartesianism in France.

• Jean Le Rond dAlembert, "Preliminary Discourse." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009.

We have everywhere compared opinions, weighed reasons, and proposed means of doubting or of escaping from doubt; at times we have even settled contested matters. [20] To the best of our ability, we have destroyed errors and prejudices. Above all, we have tried not to multiply and perpetuate them by protecting discarded opinions uncritically or by proscribing accepted opinions without reason. We have not been afraid of going to considerable lengths on a subject when the interest of truth and the importance of a matter demand it, sacrificing pleasing qualities whenever this could not be harmonized with instruction.

• Jean Le Rond dAlembert, "Preliminary Discourse." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009.

Das Edle zu erkennen ist Gewinnst / Der nimmer uns entrissen werden kann—The ability to appreciate what is noble is a gain which no one can ever take from us.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

It is only men of practical ability, knowing their powers and using them with moderation and prudence, who will be successful in worldly affairs.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections.

The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always a burden to them.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections.

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections.

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.

• John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899-1924 (ed. SIU Press, 1980).

A buona volontà, non manca facultà. (With good will, there is no lack of ability.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

La volontà suplisce alla facoltà. (The will supplements the ability.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers, which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection.

• John Locke, The Work (ed. 1714).

In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will be to that Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my ability to preserve, protect, and defend.

• John Quincy Adams, "John Quincy Adams's Inaugural Address."

Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

• Lao-Tzu, “The Internet Classics Archive | the Tao-Te Ching by Lao-Tzu.” Translated by James Legge, Part 1 Chapter 2.

The sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgments, which are based on previous judgments, which are usually based on someone else's foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system.

• Lao-Tzu, Hua Hu Ching: Teachings of Lao Tzu (ed. 1992).

I then realize that the ability to achieve the highest distinction in any meritorious activity lies in our own industry and diligence no less than in the favors of nature and of the times.

• Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting. Penguin UK, 2005. pg. 34.

I am pleased with your intellectual ability, nor do the examples you bring forward fail to satisfy me. They don’t really bring strong evidence to bear, but they do show me that you are as serious a student as I had thought you.

• Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence. Waveland Press, 1994. pg. 101. Lionardo talking to Leon Battista.

How fortunate the father who has no greater wish for his sons than to see them become good men, and who works to make them desire excellence in the noble arts and the grace of being men of the highest conduct and generally admired. Go on, my little brothers, Battista and you, too, Carlo, fulfilling the desire and hope of your father to the best of your ability since there is nothing he desires of you but this and nothing open to you which is more admirable for any man to do. Work on as you are doing to become, day by day, more learned and more recognized for it.

• Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence. Waveland Press, 1994. pg. 131.

But because everything we want and the ability granted us to attain what we wish are two different things, we will carry out our intention as well as we can, so that we appear to be lacking in talent rather than in will.

• Leonardo Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Florence, c. 1402.

In talent and intelligence our citizens are so capable that they have few equals, and no superiors. They possess shrewdness, and industry, and an ability to do things with speed and agility, and sufficient breadth of conception for the proper conduct of affairs.

• Leonardo Bruni, Oration for the Funeral of Nanni Strozzi, 1428.

"I have pass'd the Rubicon," and must stand or fall by the "cast of the die." In the latter event I shall submit without a murmur, for, though not without solicitude for the fate of these effusions, my expectations are by no means sanguine. It is probable that I may have dared much, and done little; for, in the words of Cowper, "It is one thing to write what may please our friends, who, because they are such, are apt to be a little biass'd in our favour, and another, to write what may please every body, because they who have no connection, or even knowledge of the author, will be sure to find fault if they can." To the truth of this, however, I do not wholly subscribe, on the contrary, I feel convinced, that these trifles will not be treated with injustice. Their merit, if they possess any, will be liberally allowed; their numerous faults, on the other hand, cannot expect that favour, which has been denied to others, of maturer years, decided character, and far greater ability. I have not aimed at exclusive originality, still less have I studied any particular model for imitation; some translations are given, of which many are paraphrastic.

• Lord Byron, "Hours of Idleness/Preface."

Now, consider how, in the writings of the Rabbis, the admission of a person into discourses on metaphysics is made dependent on distinction in social qualities, and study of philosophy, as well as on the possession of clear-sightedness, intelligence, eloquence, and ability to communicate things by slight allusions. If a person satisfies these requirements, the secrets of the Law are confided to him. In the same place we also read the following passage:--R. Jochanan said to R. Elasar, "Come, I will teach you Ma‘aseh Mercabah." The reply was, "I am not yet old," or in other words, I have not yet become old, I still perceive in myself the hot blood and the rashness of youth. You learn from this that, in addition to the above-named good qualities, a certain age is also required. How, then, could any person speak on these metaphysical themes in the presence of ordinary people, of children, and of women!

• Maimonides, "The Guide for the Perplexed (Friedlander)/Part I." Part I, CHAPTER XXXIV.

Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things, but give help to all according to thy ability and their fitness; and if they should have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a damage. For it is a bad habit. But as the old man, when he went away, asked back his foster-child's top, remembering that it was a top, so do thou in this case also.

• Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The Meditations, Book Five.

But in all sorts of magnificence, debauchery, and voluptuous inventions of effeminacy and expense, we do, in truth, all we can to parallel them; for our wills are as corrupt as theirs: but we want ability to equal them. Our force is no more able to reach them in their vicious, than in their virtuous, qualities, for both the one and the other proceeded from a vigour of soul which was without comparison greater in them than in us; and souls, by how much the weaker they are, by so much have they less power to do either very well or very ill. The highest place of honour amongst them was the middle. The name going before, or following after, either in writing or speaking, had no signification of grandeur, as is evident by their writings; they will as soon say Oppius and Caesar, as Caesar and Oppius; and me and thee, as thee and me. This is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the life of Flaminius, in our French Plutarch, of one passage, where it seems as if the author, speaking of the jealousy of honour betwixt the Aetolians and Romans, about the winning of a battle they had with their joined forces obtained, made it of some importance, that in the Greek songs they had put the Aetolians before the Romans: if there be no amphibology in the words of the French translation.

• Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book I Chapter XLIX. Of ancient customs.

The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for to judge of them according to my own method, I must penetrate a great deal deeper), for soldiers and military conduct, were the Duc de Guise, who died at Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of great ability and no common virtue, Olivier and De l'Hospital, Chancellors of France. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of ours; we have abundance of very good artificers in the trade: D'Aurat, Beza, Buchanan, L'Hospital, Montdore, Turnebus; as to the French poets, I believe they raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can ever arrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, I find them little inferior to the ancient perfection.

• Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II Chapter XVII. Of presumption.

This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is to say, opinion and the courage of judging. This so vigorous fancy of Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit. Aesop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and that he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these two have taken up all before me; they know everything." So has it happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability to proceed further.

• Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book III Chapter XI. Of Cripples.

I say, then, that in entirely new Princedoms where the Prince himself is new, the difficulty of maintaining possession varies with the greater or less ability of him who acquires possession. And, because the mere fact of a private person rising to be a Prince presupposes either merit or good fortune, it will be seen that the presence of one or other of these two conditions lessens, to some extent, many difficulties. And yet, he who is less beholden to Fortune has often in the end the better success; and it may be for the advantage of a Prince that, from his having no other territories, he is obliged to reside in person in the State which he has acquired.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, SDE Classics, 2019. Chapter VI, pg. 18.

The Marquis de la Fayette, the brave and generous nobleman, whose services command the gratitude of every American, had been dispatched with about two thousand light infantry, from the main army, to watch the motions of lord Cornwallis in Virginia. He prosecuted this expedition with the greatest military ability. Although his force was much inferior to that of the enemy, he obliged them to leave Richmond and Williamsburgh, and to seek protection under their shipping.

• Noah Webster, “A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings.” No. XV. SKETCHES of the RISE, PROGRESS and CONSEQUENCES of the late REVOLUTION.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

• Oscar Wilde, Epigrams: An Anthology (ed. 1952)

Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas—The will is commendable, though the ability may be wanting.

• Ovid, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

For it is as true of thee as of others (and thou must be aware of the fact) that a man’s intellectual powers are not equally suited for development in all directions, but that they will evince a special degree of qualification in one only. Thou wert a great man, I acknowledge it; but thy highest merit lay in thy ability to ground and to mold great men. If thou hadst had suitable material to hand, thou wouldst easily have produced a greater than thyself, O thou who didst so wisely develop the rare intellects intrusted to thy care!

• Petrarch, Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors, pg. 87-88, Quintilian.

This is like the case of the two farmers who are of equal ability and energy; the one who has the luck to own the more fertile land will appear to be the better farmer. Likewise, in the case of two ship captains equal in every other way, he will be the more fortunate who sails on more tranquil seas and is propelled by more favorable breezes.

• Petrarch, How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State, 1373.

Non ætate verum ingenio adipiscitur sapientia—Wisdom is not attained with years, but by ability.

• Plautus, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

To speak generally, what we are wont to say about the arts and sciences is also true of moral excellence, for to its perfect development three things must meet together, natural ability, theory, and practice. By theory I mean training, and by practice working at one's craft. Now the foundation must be laid in training, and practice gives facility, but perfection is attained only by the junction of all three. For if any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both natural ability and training is imperfect.

• Plutarch, Morals, On Education.

For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. I should therefore maintain stoutly that these three elements were found combined in the souls of such universally famous men as Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, and of all who have won undying fame.

• Plutarch, Morals, On Education.

But if anyone thinks that those who have not good natural ability cannot to some extent make up for the deficiencies of nature by right training and practice, let such a one know that he is very wide of the mark, if not out of it altogether. For good natural parts are impaired by sloth; while inferior ability is mended by training: and while simple things escape the eyes of the careless, difficult things are reached by painstaking. The wonderful efficacy and power of long and continuous labour you may see indeed every day in the world around you. Thus water continually dropping wears away rocks: and iron and steel are moulded by the hands of the artificer: and chariot wheels bent by some strain can never recover their original symmetry: and the crooked staves of actors can never be made straight. But by toil what is contrary to nature becomes stronger than even nature itself.

• Plutarch, Morals, On Education.

But someone will say, these examples are difficult and hard to follow. I know it. But we must try, as far as possible, following these examples, to avoid ungovernable and mad rage. For we cannot in other respects equal those distinguished men in their ability and virtue, nevertheless we must, like initiating priests of the gods and torchbearers of wisdom, attempt as far as possible to imitate and nibble at their practice. Then, again, if anyone thinks it a small and unimportant matter to govern the tongue, another point I promised to touch on, he is very far from the reality. For silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. And that is, I think, the reason why the ancients instituted the mysteries that we, learning therein to be silent, might transfer our secrecy to the gods to human affairs.

• Plutarch, Morals, On Education.

Vermögren sucht Vermögen—Ability seeks ability.

• Proverb.

Gentility without ability is waur (worse) than plain begging.

• Proverb.

After long consultation, engage either in speaking or acting; for you have not the ability to recall either your words or deeds.

• “The Pythagorean Sentences of Demophilus.” Sacred-Texts.com, 2024, sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp06.htm. Accessed 5 June 2024.

Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.

• Pythagoras, The Golden Ratio (2002) by Mario Livio.

Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting than the cloth. They embrace their cause with more tenacity than their life. Though not military, yet every common subject by the poll is fit to make a soldier of. These private reserved mute family-men can adopt a public end with all their heat, and this strength of affection makes the romance of their heroes. The difference of rank does not divide the national heart. The Danish poet Ohlenschlager complains, that who writes in Danish, writes to two hundred readers. In Germany, there is one speech for the learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great German writer is ever heard among the lower classes. But in England, the language of the noble is the language of the poor. In Parliament, in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers rise to thought and passion, the language becomes idiomatic; the people in the street best understand the best words. And their language seems drawn from the Bible, the common law, and the works of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, Burns, and Scott. The island has produced two or three of the greatest men that ever existed, but they were not solitary in their own time. Men quickly embodied what Newton found out, in Greenwich observatories, and practical navigation. The boys know all that Hutton knew of strata, or Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels; and these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. So what is invented or known in agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in art, or in literature, and antiquities. A great ability, not amassed on a few giants, but poured into the general mind, so that each of them could at a pinch stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more bound in character, than differenced in ability or in rank. The laborer is a possible lord. The lord is a possible basket-maker.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits/Ability.

He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature - Conduct of Life.

But since I designed to employ my whole life in the search after so necessary a science, and since I had fallen in with a path which seems to me such, that if any one follow it he must inevitably reach the end desired, unless he be hindered either by the shortness of life or the want of experiments, I judged that there could be no more effectual provision against these two impediments than if I were faithfully to communicate to the public all the little I might myself have found, and incite men of superior genius to strive to proceed farther, by contributing, each according to his inclination and ability, to the experiments which it would be necessary to make, and also by informing the public of all they might discover, so that, by the last beginning where those before them had left off, and thus connecting the lives and labours of many, we might collectively proceed much farther than each by himself could do.

• René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Meditations of First Philosophy & Principles of Philosophy. Anodos Books, 2019. pg 27-28.

For though it be true that every one is bound to promote to the extent of his ability the good of others, and that to be useful to no one is really to be worthless, yet it is likewise true that our cares ought to extend beyond the present, and it is good to omit doing what might perhaps bring some profit to the living, when we have in view the accomplishment of other ends that will be of much greater advantage to posterity. And in truth, I am quite willing it should be known that the little I have hitherto learned is almost nothing in comparison with that of which I am ignorant, and to the knowledge of which I do not despair of being able to attain; for it is much the same with those who gradually discover truth in the sciences, as with those who when growing rich find less difficulty in making great acquisitions, than they formerly experienced when poor in making acquisitions of much smaller amount. Or they may be compared to the commanders of armies, whose forces usually increase in proportion to their victories, and who need greater prudence to keep together the residue of their troops after a defeat than after a victory to take towns and provinces. For he truly engages in battle who endeavors to surmount all the difficulties and errors which prevent him from reaching the knowledge of truth, and he is overcome in fight who admits a false opinion touching a matter of any generality and importance, and he requires thereafter much more skill to recover his former position than to make great advances when once in possession of thoroughly ascertained principles.

• René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Meditations of First Philosophy & Principles of Philosophy. Anodos Books, 2019. pg 29.

Among the many just and admirable remarks in this essay on “Discourse,” Bacon does not notice the distinction—which is an important one—between those who speak because they wish to say something, and those who speak because they have something to say: that is, between those who are aiming at displaying their own knowledge or ability, and those who speak from fulness of matter, and are thinking only of the matter, and not of themselves and the opinion that will be formed of them. This latter, Bishop Butler calls (in reference to writings) “a man writing with simplicity and in earnest.” It is curious to observe how much more agreeable is even inferior conversation of this latter description, and how it is preferred by many—they know not why—who are not accustomed to analyze their own feelings, or to inquire why they like or dislike.

• Richard Whately, Annot. on Bacon’s Essay, Of Discourse.

“Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.” [Bacon’s Essay,] We should, then, cultivate, not only the corn-fields of our minds, but the pleasure-grounds also. Every faculty and every study, however worthless they may be, when not employed in the service of God,—however debased and polluted when devoted to the service of sin,—become ennobled and sanctified when directed, by one whose constraining motive is the love of Christ, towards a good object. Let not the Christian then think “scorn of the pleasant land.” That land is the field of ancient and modern literature,—of philosophy, in almost all its departments,—of the arts of reasoning and persuasion. Every part of it may be cultivated with advantage, as the Land of Canaan when bestowed upon God’s peculiar people. They were not commanded to let it lie waste, as incurably polluted by the abominations of its first inhabitants; but to cultivate it, and dwell in it, living in obedience to the divine laws, and dedicating its choicest fruits to the Lord their God.

• Richard Whately, Annot. on Bacon’s Essay, Of Studies.

A pleader of powers far above the average is not, as such, serviceable to the Public. He obtains wealth and credit for himself and his family; but any special advantage accruing from his superior ability, to those who chance to be his clients, is just so much loss to those he chances to be opposed to: and which party is, on each occasion, in the right, must be regarded as an even chance. His death, therefore, would be no loss to the Public; only to those particular persons who might have benefited by his superior abilities, at their opponents’ expense. It is not that advocates generally are not useful to the Public. They are even necessary. But extraordinary ability in an advocate is an advantage only to himself and his friends. To the Public, the most desirable thing is, that pleaders should be as equally matched as possible; so that neither John Doe nor Richard Roe should have any advantage independent of the goodness of his cause.

• Richard Whately, Lecture on the Professions.

“The world,” says Locke, “has people of all sorts.” As in the general hurry produced by the superfluities of some, and necessities of others, no man needs to stand still for want of employment, so in the innumerable gradations of ability, and endless varieties of study and inclination, no employment can be vacant for want of a man qualified to discharge it.

• “No. 160. Rules for the Choice of Associates.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-160-rules-for-the-choice-of-associates/.

The present age, if we consider chiefly the state of our own country, may be styled, with great propriety, The Age of Authors; for, perhaps, there never was a time in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment, were posting with ardour so general to the press. The province of writing was formerly left to those, who by study, or appearance of study, were supposed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind; but in these enlightened days, every man is qualified to instruct every other man: and he that beats the anvil, or guides the plough, not content with supplying corporal necessities, amuses himself in the hours of leisure with providing intellectual pleasures for his countrymen.

• “No. 115. The Itch of Writing Universal.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1753, www.johnsonessays.com/the-adventurer/no-115-the-itch-of-writing-universal/.

Nothing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that perpetually surround us, as an habitual consideration of the shortness of life, and the uncertainty of those pleasures that solicit our pursuit; and this consideration can be inculcated only by affliction. “O Death! how bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a man that lives at ease in his possessions!” If our present state were one continued succession of delights, or one uniform flow of calmness and tranquillity, we should never willingly think upon its end; death would then surely surprise us as “a thief in the night;” and our task of duty would remain unfinished, till “the night came when no man can work.”

• “No. 120. The Miseries of Life.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1753, www.johnsonessays.com/the-adventurer/no-120-the-miseries-of-life/.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

• Samuel Johnson, The Rambler: In Four Volumes (ed. 1761).

Your friend and I have had a conversation. He is a man of ability; his very first words showed what spirit and understanding he possesses, and what progress he has already made. He gave me a foretaste, and he will not fail to answer thereto. For he spoke not from forethought, but was suddenly caught off his guard. When he tried to collect himself, he could scarcely banish that hue of modesty, which is a good sign in a young man; the blush that spread over his face seemed so to rise from the depths. And I feel sure that his habit of blushing will stay with him after he has strengthened his character, stripped off all his faults, and become wise. For by no wisdom can natural weaknesses of the body be removed. That which is implanted and inborn can be toned down by training, but not overcome.

• Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 11.

Whenever men have been thrust forward by fortune, whenever they have become part and parcel of another's influence, they have found abundant favour, their houses have been thronged, only so long as they themselves have kept their position; when they themselves have left it, they have slipped at once from the memory of men. But in the case of innate ability, the respect in which it is held increases, and not only does honour accrue to the man himself, but whatever has attached itself to his memory is passed on from one to another.

• Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 21.

The want of a provision for removing the Judges on account of inability, has been a subject of complaint. But all considerate men will be sensible, that such a provision would either not be practised upon, or would be more liable to abuse, than calculated to answer any good purpose. The mensuration of the faculties of the mind has, I believe, no place in the catalogue of known arts. An attempt to fix the boundary between the regions of ability and inability, would much oftener give scope to personal and party attachments and enmities, than advance the interests of justice, or the public good. The result, except in the case of insanity, must for the most part be arbitrary; and insanity, without any formal or express provision, may be safely pronounced to be a virtual disqualification.

• "The Federalist (Dawson)/79."

No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us.

• Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: The strenuous life (ed. 1901)

Finding your able man, and getting him invested with the symbols of ability, is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure whatsoever in this world.

• Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

But leaving this, let us remark one thing which is very plain: That whatever be the uses and duties, real or supposed, of a Secretary in Parliament, his faculty to accomplish these is a point entirely unconnected with his ability to get elected into Parliament, and has no relation or proportion to it, and no concern with it whatever.

• Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850) - Downing Street (April 1, 1850).

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to every one a talent for the purpose; and among those to whom such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do it.

• Thomas Paine, “Examination of the Prophesies, 1807.”

For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

• Thucydides, Peloponnesian war (ed. 1903).

The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.

• Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire (ed. 1901).

A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,
When he or she appears materials are overaw'd,
The dispute on the soul stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn'd back, or laid away.
What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
What is your respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?
Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the soul now?

• Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass (1882)/Song of the Broad-Axe."

Out of my lean and low ability
I'll lend you something.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.

All lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Act iii. Sc. 2.

If it should excite wonder that men of ability, in later life, whose understandings have been rendered acute by practice in affairs, should be so easily and so far imposed upon when they happen to take up a new work in verse, this appears to be the cause;—that, having discontinued their attention to poetry, whatever progress may have been made in other departments of knowledge, they have not, as to this art, advanced in true discernment beyond the age of youth. If then a new poem falls in their way, whose attractions are of that kind which would have enraptured them during the heat of youth, the judgment not being improved to a degree that they shall be disgusted, they are dazzled; and prize and cherish the faults for having had power to make the present time vanish before them, and to throw the mind back, as by enchantment, into the happiest season of life. As they read, powers seem to be revived, passions are regenerated, and pleasures restored. The Book was probably taken up after an escape from the burthen of business, and with a wish to forget the world, and all its vexations and anxieties. Having obtained this wish, and so much more, it is natural that they should make report as they have felt.

• William Wordsworth, "Poems (Wordsworth, 1815)/Volume 1/Essay."

The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year – and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

• Winston Churchill, Newspaper interview (1902), when asked what qualities a politician required, Halle, Kay, Irrepressible Churchill. Cleveland: World, 1966. cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 489.

Absence

I have been long a sleeper; but I trust
My absence doth neglect no great design
Which by my presence might have been concluded.

• William Shakespeare, Richard III Act 3, Scene 4

All the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.

• William Shakespeare, Coriolanus. Act 1, scene 3

I dote on his very absence.

• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 2.

Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.

• William Cowper, Retirement. Line 623.

Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,—
The pain without the peace of death!

• Thomas Campbell, "Absence", The poetical works of Thomas Campbell (1837).

Moreover a testimony in points Historical, and where it is of unavoidable use, is of no illation in the negative, nor is it of consequence that Herodotus writing nothing of Rome, there was therefore no such City in his time; or because Dioscorides hath made no mention of Unicorns horn, there is therefore no such thing in Nature. Indeed, intending an accurate enumeration of Medical materials, the omission hereof affords some probability, it was not used by the Ancients, but will not conclude the non-existence thereof. For so may we annihilate many Simples unknown to his enquiries, as Senna, Rhubarb, Bezoar, Ambregris, and divers others. Whereas indeed the reason of man hath not such restraint; concluding not onely affirmatively but negatively; not onely affirming there is no magnitude beyond the last heavens, but also denying there is any vacuity within them. Although it be confessed, the affirmative hath the prerogative illation, and Barbara engrosseth the powerful demonstration.

• “Vulgar Errors I:VII: Of Authority.”

Mother went off for three days to New York and Mame and Quentin took instant advantage of her absence to fall sick. Quentin's sickness was surely due to a riot in candy and ice-cream with chocolate sauce.

• Theodore Roosevelt, Letters to His Children. 1919.

I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.

• Robert Frost, The Fear.

A good thing is esteemed more in its absence than in its enjoyment.

• Proverb.

When Phœbus hath no mind to strain and press
Our chilly sphere in his embraces bright,
His negligence the multitude call Night,
A name of absence, till he glow again.

• “Sonnets and Madrigals of Michelangelo Buonarroti | Project Gutenberg.”

Though the presence of imaginary good cannot make us happy, the absence of it may make us miserable.

• Joseph Addison, "happy, adj." A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson. 1773.

Absence, what the poets call death in love, has given occasion to beautiful complaints in those authors who have treated of this passion in verse.

• Joseph Addison, Prose Quotations From Socrates to Macaulay.

Can flowers but droop in absence of the sun,
Which waked their sweets?

• John Dryden, Aureng-zebe (1675).

Make use of Absence to make yourself more esteemed or valued.
If the accustomed presence diminishes fame, absence augments it. One that is regarded as a lion in his absence may be laughed at when present as the ridiculous result of the parturition of the mountains. Talents get soiled by use, for it is easier to see the exterior rind than the kernel of greatness it encloses. Imagination reaches farther than sight, and disillusion, which ordinarily comes through the ears, also goes out through the ears. He keeps his fame that keeps himself in the centre of public opinion. Even the Phoenix uses its retirement for new adornment and turns absence into desire.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

I am the better acquainted with you for absence, as men are with themselves for affliction: absence does but hold off a friend to make one see him truly.

• Alexander Pope, Letter, written in collaboration with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, to Jonathan Swift, December 14, 1725.

Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more.

• Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, Lines 361-366.

In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.

• Ben Jonson, Masques at court. Epigrams. The forest. Underwoods, consisting of divers poems (ed. 1756).

A type conveys absence and presence, pleasure and pain.
A cipher has a double meaning, one clear, and one in which it is said that the meaning is hidden.

• "Blaise Pascal/Thoughts/Section 10."

Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

• Charles Lamb, Amicus Redivivus. - Last Essays of Elia (1833)

All which her sight made live, her absence die.

• Christopher Marlowe, "Hero and Leander (Marlowe)/Third Sestyad."

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning —
Of all to whom thy absence is the night —
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun — of all who, weeping, bless thee

• Edger Allen Poe, “To MLS.”

Like as the culver on the bared bough
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate

• Edmund Spenser, Selected Shorter Poems (ed. Longman Publishing Group, 1995).

Among all cures I chiefly do commend
Absence in this to be the only friend;
And so it is, but I would have ye learn
The perfect use of absence to discern.
First then, when thou art absent to her sight,
In solitariness do not delight:
Be seldom left alone, for then I know
A thousand vexing thoughts will come and go.

• “The Remedy of Love by Francis Beaumont.”

Absence cools moderate Passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the Wind blows out Candles, but kindles Fires.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

But there is also a famous danger in their "inwardness": the internal substance cannot be seen from the outside, and so may one day take the opportunity of vanishing, and no one notice its absence, any more than its presence before. One may think the German people to be very far from this danger: yet the foreigner will have some warrant for his reproach that our inward life is too weak and ill-organised to provide a form and external expression for itself. It may in rare cases show itself finely receptive, earnest and powerful, richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples: but, taken as a whole, it remains weak, as all its fine threads are not tied together in one strong knot.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life."

Absence, the noble truce
Of Cupid's war:
Where though desires want use,
They honour'd are.
Thou art the just protection,
Of prodigal affection,
Have thou the praise;
When bankrupt Cupid braveth,
Thy mines his credit saveth,
With sweet delays.

• Jokinen, Anniina. “Fulke Greville. ‘Caelica’. Sonnet 45. Absence, the Noble Truce. XLV.” Luminarium.org, 27 May 2023, www.luminarium.org/renlit/caelica45.htm. Accessed 7 May 2024. Note: Original source is Gunn, Thom, ed. Selected Poems of Fulke Greville. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 75-77.

Of wounds which presence makes
With beauty's shot,
Absence the anguish slakes,
But healeth not:
Absence records the stories,
Wherein Desire glories,
Although she burn;
She cherisheth the spirits
Where Constancy inherits
And passions mourn.
Absence, like dainty clouds,
On glorious bright,
Nature weak senses shrouds,
From harming light.
Absence maintains the treasure
Of pleasure unto pleasure,
Sparing with praise;
Absence doth nurse the fire,
Which starves and feeds desire
With sweet delays.
Presence to every part
Of beauty ties,
Where wonder rules the heart
There pleasure dies:
Presence plagues mind and senses
With modesty's defenses,
Absence is free:
Thoughts do in absence venter
On Cupid's shadowed centre,
They wink and see.
But thoughts be not so brave,
With absent joy;
For you with that you have
Yourself destroy:
The absence which you glory,
Is that which makes you sorry,
And burn in vain:
For thought is not the weapon,
Wherewith thoughts' ease men cheapen,
Absence is pain.

• Jokinen, Anniina. “Fulke Greville. ‘Caelica’. Sonnet 45. Absence, the Noble Truce. XLV.” Luminarium.org, 27 May 2023, www.luminarium.org/renlit/caelica45.htm. Accessed 7 May 2024. Note: Original source is Gunn, Thom, ed. Selected Poems of Fulke Greville. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 75-77.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

• George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House (1920).

In no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.

• George Eliot, The Writings of George Eliot... (ed. 1908).

Even the absurdest report may in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had there been no such actual occurrence, this preposterous misrepresentation of it would never have existed. Though the distorted or magnified image transmitted to us through the refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality; yet in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or magnified image.

• Herbert Spencer, First Principles, Part 1, Chapter 1.

IN ABSENCE.
And shall I then regain thee never?
My beautiful! And art thou flown?
Still in my ears resounds for ever
Thy every word, thy every tone.
As through the air, when morn is springing,
The wanderer peers in vain, to trace
The lark, that o'er him high is singing,
Hid in the azure depth of space;
So, love, through field and forest lonely
My sad eyes roam in quest of thee;
My songs are tuned to thee, thee only;
Oh, come, my own love, back to me!

• The Works of J. W. von Goethe/Volume 9/In Absence

Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength,
Distance, and length;
Do what thou canst for alteration

• John Donne, Poem Present in Absence.

Abstinence

Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy.

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601).

Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

• Voltaire, "Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738).

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue.

• Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, (ed. 1767).

ABSTINENCE
The wild ass, if when going to the spring to drink, it should find the water muddy, has never so great a thirst as to cause it not to abstain from drinking and wait until the water grows clear.

• Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo’s Notebooks: Writing and Art of the Great Master. Edited by H. Anna Suh, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013. Philosophy, Aphorisms, and Miscellaneous Writing, pg. 404.

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

• Leo Tolstoy, The First Step (1892).

He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal.

• “The Internet Classics Archive | the Tao-Te Ching by Lao-Tzu.” Translated by James Legge, Part 1 Chapter 3.

Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense
And made almost a sin of abstinence.

• John Dryden, The Character Of A Good Parson.

The methods, by means of which one may become a medicine-man Red Indian, a saint among medieval Christians, an Angekok among Greenlanders and a Pajec among Brazilians, are essentially the same: absurd fasting, continual sexual abstinence. retirement into a wilderness, ascending a mountain or a pillar, or sitting on an aged willow which looks upon a lake," and thinking absolutely nothing but what may prompt some ecstasy or mental derangement. Who has the courage to look into the wilderness of the most bitter and superfluous mental agonies in which probably the most productive minds of all ages have suffered untold misery? Who would listen to the sighs. of these solitary and troubled minds: "Oh, ye powers in heaven above, grant me madness! Madness, that I may at last have faith in my own self! Send delirious fits and convulsions, sudden lights and darknesses; terrible frost and heat, such as no mortal ever suffered; frighten we will rumblings and haunting spectres, make me howl and whine and crawl like a beast: in order to be filled with a belief in my own self. Doubt is devouring me; I have slain the law, and the law haunts me, even so as a dead body does a living being. If I am not above the law, I am the most depraved of all men. The spirit, which dwells within me, whence comes it, unless it comes from you? Grant me a proof that I am yours; nothing but mad-ness will prove it to me." Only too often this fervour did its work too well; during the same period in which Christianity proved most prolific in saints and anchorites, believing that thereby it was proving itself, Jerusalem had large lunatic asylums for lost saints who had yielded up their last grain of salt.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 1."

The commonest means which the ascetic and saint employs to render life still endurable and amusing consists in occasional warfare with alternate victory and defeat. For this he requires an opponent, and finds it in the so-called " inward enemy." He principally makes use of his inclination to vanity, love of honour and rule, and of his sensual desires, that he may be permitted to regard his life as a perpetual battle and himself as a battlefield upon which good and evil spirits strive with alternating success. It is well known that sensual imagination is moderated, indeed almost dispelled, by regular sexual intercourse, whereas, on the contrary, it is rendered unfettered and wild by abstinence or irregularity. The imagination of many Christian saints was filthy to an extraordinary degree ; by virtue of those theories that these desires were actual demons raging within them they did not feel themselves to be too responsible ; to this feeling we owe the very instructive frankness of their self-confessions. It was to their interest that this strife should always be maintained in one degree or another, because, as we have already said, their empty life was thereby entertained. But in order that the strife might seem sufficiently important and arouse the enduring sympathy and admiration of non-saints, it was necessary that sensuality should be ever more reviled and branded, the danger of eternal damnation was so tightly bound up with these things that it is highly probable that for whole centuries Christians generated children with a bad conscience, wherewith humanity has certainly suffered a great injury.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence--but without its being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers--perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or, better still, to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY--Yet in the background of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as the problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the saint possible?--that seems to have been the very question with which Schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil/Chapter III."

Absurdity

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.

• Voltaire, Questions sur les miracles (1765).

Strange to think of an Enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moon-light sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity.—If these two distinguished Writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a Poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages of the elder Poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to these appearances.

• William Wordsworth, "Poems (Wordsworth, 1815)/Volume 1/Essay."

He would argue the most ridiculous point (such as that there were two original languages) for hours together, nay, through the horologe. You would not suppose it was the same person. He was like an obstinate run-away horse, that takes the bit in his mouth, and becomes mischievous and unmanageable. He had made up his mind to one thing, not to admit a single particle of what any one else said for or against him. It was all the difference between a man drunk or sober, sane or mad. It is the same when he once gets the pen in his hand. He has been trying to prove a contradiction in terms for the ten last years of his life, viz. that the Bourbons have the same right to the throne of France that the Brunswick family have to the throne of England. Many people think there is a want of honesty or a want of understanding in this. There is neither. But he will persist in an argument to the last pinch; he will yield, in absurdity, to no man!

• William Hazlitt, “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY III ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS.

That the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity; and that we forget the proper use of the time, now in our power, to provide for the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has been frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay, and of declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetorick. Every instance, by which its absurdity might appear most flagrant, has been studiously collected; it has been marked with every epithet of contempt, and all the tropes and figures have been called forth against it.

• “No. 2. The Necessity and Danger of Looking into Futurity.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-2-the-necessity-and-danger-of-looking-into-futurity/.

Do not believe in an absurdity
no matter who says it.

• Rumi, "The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196 - The Essential Rumi (1995).

When men first take up an opinion, and then afterwards seek for reasons for it, they must be contented with such as the absurdity of it will afford.

• Robert South, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

It is an absurdity that he should rule others who cannot command himself.

• Proverb.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for Error is always talkative.

• Oliver Goldsmith, The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith.

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

• Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543).

The history of the persecutions to which the champions of liberty were exposed, during this epoch, ought not to be forgotten. These persecutions will be found to extend from the truths of philosophy and politics to those of medicine, natural history and astronomy. In the eighth century an ignorant pope had persecuted a deacon for contending that the earth was round, in opposition to the opinion of the rhetorical Saint Austin. In the seventeenth, the ignorance of another pope, much more inexcuseable, delivered Galileo into the hands of the inquisition, accused of having proved the diurnal and annual motion of the earth. The greatest genius that modern Italy has given to the sciences, overwhelmed with age and infirmities, was obliged to purchase his release from punishment and from prison, by asking pardon of God for having taught men better to understand his works, and to admire him in the simplicity of the eternal laws by which he governs the universe.
Meanwhile, so great was the absurdity of the theologians, that, in condescension to human understanding, they granted a permission to maintain the motion of the earth, at the same time that they insisted that it should be only in the way of an hypothesis, and that the faith should receive no injury. The astronomers, on the other hand, did the exact opposite of this; they treated the motion of the earth as a reality, and spoke of its immoveableness with a deference only hypothetical.

• Marquis de Condorcet, Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind. M. Carey, 1795, pp. 177-178.

When [Abraham] the "Pillar of the World" appeared, he became convinced that there is a spiritual Divine Being, which is not a body, nor a force residing in a body, but is the author of the spheres and the stars; and he saw the absurdity of the tales in which he had been brought up. He therefore began to attack the belief of the Sabeans, to expose the falsehood of their opinions, and to proclaim publicly in opposition to them, "the name of the Lord, the God of the Universe" (Gen. xxi. 33), which proclamation included at the same time the Existence of God, and the Creation of the Universe by God.

• Maimonides, Ch.29 - Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190) - Part III.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

• Joseph Addison,

The assumption on which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor); and would be maintained by no one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in greatest repute with the world, both for virtues and for attainments, are well known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity, that the qualification for undergoing it, is the being clearly proved not to deserve it. The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less insulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe in a future state, necessarily lies, it follows that they who do believe are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are, by the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule the injury of supposing, that the conception which they have formed of Christian virtue is drawn from their own consciousness.

• John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty/Chapter 2."

There is nothing really more monstrous in any recorded savagery or absurdity of mankind than that governments should be able to get money for any folly they choose to commit, by selling to capitalists the right of taxing future generations to the end of time.

• John Ruskin, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Experience and philosophy are lost upon mankind. The attention of the world has a charm in it, which few minds can withstand. The people consider the condition of the great in all those delusive colors, in which imagination can paint and gild it, and reason can make little resistance to this impetuous propensity. To better their condition, to advance their fortunes, without limits, is the object of their constant desire, the employment of all their thoughts by day and by night. They feel a peculiar sympathy with that pleasure, which they presume those enjoy, who are already powerful, celebrated, and rich. “We favor,” says a great writer, “all their inclinations, and forward all their wishes. What pity, we think, that any thing should spoil and corrupt so agreeable a situation; we could even wish them immortal; and it seems hard to us, that death should at last put an end to such perfect enjoyment. It is cruel, we think, in nature to compel them from their exalted stations to that humble, but hospitable home, which she has provided for all her children. Great king, live forever! is the compliment, which, after the manner of eastern adulation, we should readily make them, if experience did not teach us its absurdity. Every calamity that befalls them, every injury that is done them, excites in the breast of the spectator ten times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt, had the same things happened to other men. It is the misfortunes of kings only, which afford the proper subjects for tragedy; they resemble, in this respect, the misfortunes of lovers.

• The Works of John Adams, vol. 6. Little, Brown, and Company, 1851, p. 258.

What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice: Chapter 41

What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?

• James Joyce, ‘A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.’

As for a certain fanciful belief entertained by some persons—namely, that warfare was formerly permissible but has become illicit since Christ propounded His teachings, or at least that this is the case as regards wars among Christians—that supposition might be viewed with tolerance if it were interpreted as meaning that there always exists in any war, on one side or the other, some guilt unworthy of the name of Christian; but in the present instance, when the said persons maintain that both sides are necessarily committing a sin, their contention is the height of absurdity.
For the law of nature—that is to say, the law instilled by God into the heart of created things, from the first moment of their creation, for their own conservation—is law for all times and all places, inasmuch as the Divine Will is immutable and eternal. This is the conclusion reached by Socrates, as quoted in Plato’s Minos. The validity of such law for all times is proclaimed by Sophocles, when he says:
οὐ γάρ τι νυ̑ν τε κἀχθἑς, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε
ζῃ̑ ταυ̑τα.
Not of to-day, nor yet of yesterday,
Are these, [the laws of Heav’n,] but for all time.
Its validity for all places is recognized by Empedocles
in these lines:
ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πάντων νόμιμον, διά τ’ εὐρυμἑδοντος
αἰθἑρος ἠνεκἑως τἑταται, διά τ’ ἀπλἑτου αἴης.
That law has common force and is upheld
Throughout the far-flung heav’ns and earth’s vast realms.

• Hugo Grotius, Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty. Liberty Fund, 1603, pp. 54-55.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. No one sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a delicate absurdity in a stone falling down. No man stops in the road and roars with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down. The fall of thunderbolts is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and high buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a man tumbles down that we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

• G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered (Methuen, 1908).

Nothing exceeds in ridicule, no doubt, / A fool in fashion, save a fool that’s out; / His passion for absurdity’s so strong, / He cannot bear a rival in the throng.

• Edward Young, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

That subjects were not to judge of their governors, or rather for themselves in the business of government, which of all human things concerns them most, was an absurdity that never entered into the imagination of the wise and honest ancients: Who, following for their guide that everlasting reason, which is the best and only guide in human affairs, carried liberty, and human happiness, the legitimate offspring and work of liberty, to the highest pitch that they were capable of arriving at. But the above absurdity, with many others as monstrous and mischievous, were reserved for the discovery of a few wretched and dreaming Mahometan and Christian monks, who, ignorant of all things, were made, or made themselves, the directors of all things; and bewitching the world with holy lies and unaccountable ravings, dressed up in barbarous words and uncouth phrases, bent all their fairy force against common sense and common liberty and truth, and founded a pernicious, absurd, and visionary empire upon their ruins. Systems without sense, propositions without truth, religion without reason, a rampant church without charity, severity without justice, and government without liberty or mercy, were all the blessed handy-works of these religious mad-men, and godly pedants; who, by pretending to know the other world, cheated and confounded this. Their enmity to common sense, and want of it, were their warrants for governing the sense of all mankind: By lying, they were thought the champions of the truth; and by their fooleries, impieties, and cruelty, were esteemed the favourites and confidents of the God of wisdom, mercy, and peace.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 59." Written by John Trenchard.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Controversy" as translated by T. Bailey Saunders - Essays.

Abundance

“We may enjoy abundance of peace if we refrain from busying ourselves with the sayings and doings of others, and things which concern not ourselves.”

• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

If one prefers to have little with blessing, to have truth with concern, to suffer instead of exulting over imagined victories, then one presumably will not be disposed to praise the knowledge, as if what it bestows were at all proportionate to the trouble it causes, although one would not therefore deny that through its pain it educates a person, if he is honest enough to want to be educated rather than to be deceived, out of the multiplicity to seek the one, out of abundance to seek the one thing needful, as this is plainly and simply offered precisely according to the need for it.

• Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 128-129 - Upbuilding Discourses (1843-1844).

Let people then consider their food:
how We pour down rain in abundance
and meticulously split the earth open ˹for sprouts˺,
causing grain to grow in it,
as well as grapes and greens,
and olives and palm trees,
and dense orchards,
and fruit and fodder—
all as ˹a means of˺ sustenance for you and your animals.

• Qu'ran, "'Abasa" (He Frowned) 80:24-32, Saheeh International

Where there is content there is abundance.

• Proverb.

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

• Dutch Proverb.

Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance. What appetite would not be baffled to see three hundred women at its mercy, as the grand signor has in his seraglio? And, of his ancestors what fruition or taste of sport did he reserve to himself, who never went hawking without seven thousand falconers? And besides all this, I fancy that this lustre of grandeur brings with it no little disturbance and uneasiness upon the enjoyment of the most tempting pleasures; the great are too conspicuous and lie too open to every one's view. Neither do I know to what end a man should more require of them to conceal their errors, since what is only reputed indiscretion in us, the people in them brand with the names of tyranny and contempt of the laws, and, besides their proclivity to vice, are apt to hold that it is a heightening of pleasure to them, to insult over and to trample upon public observances. Plato, indeed, in his Goygias, defines a tyrant to be one who in a city has licence to do whatever his own will leads him to do; and by reason of this impunity, the display and publication of their vices do ofttimes more mischief than the vice itself.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book I Chapter XLII. Of the inequality amongst us.

For them old ocean's rocks are smoothed;
December's face grows mild;
To vernal airs her blasts are soothed,
And all their rage beguiled.
When Famine rolls her haggard eyes,
His ever-bounteous hand
Abundance from the sea supplies,
And treasures from the sand.

• John Quincy Adams, “Hymn for the Twenty-Second of December.”

Per l'abbondanza del cuor, la bocca parla. (Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

L'abbondanza genera fastidio. (Abundance generates annoyance.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

Invitta copia è confidenza ed arte. (Unconquered abundance is confidence and skill.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

Abondanza, vicina è d'aroganza. (Abundance is close to arrogance.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?

• Henry David Thoreau, The writings of Henry David Thoreau... (ed. 1906).

We live in an age of science and of abundance. The care and reverence for books as such, proper to an age when no book was duplicated until someone took the pains to copy it out by hand, is obviously no longer suited to 'the needs of society', or to the conservation of learning. The weeder is supremely needed if the Garden of the Muses is to persist as a garden.

• Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (ed. New Directions Publishing, 2010) - ISBN: 9780811218931

Satis quercus (Enough of oak) [referring to abundance or sufficiency].

• Erasmus, Koning, Paula. “Erasmus Adagia.” Www.let.leidenuniv.nl, 1703, www.let.leidenuniv.nl/Dutch/Latijn/ErasmusAdagia.html.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

• Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (ed. 2016).

Poor in abundance, famished at a feast, man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise, and discontent is immortality.

• Edward Young, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Whence he, who snares in great abundance had,
Responded: "I by far too cunning am,
When I procure for mine a greater sadness."

• "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 1/Canto 22."

How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.

• 2 Corinthians 8:2 KJV

But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

• (Romans 5:15-21 KJV)

Just think of the illimitable abundance and the marvelous loveliness of light, or of the beauty of the sun and moon and stars.

• Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (ed. 1962)

Abuse

Now o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings.

• William Shakespeare, Macbeth, II, i, 49

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins Remorse from power.

• William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (1599), II, i, 18

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse;
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 3.

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.

• Volatire, A Philosophical Dictionary (ed. 1824).

The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

• Volatire, A philosophical dictionary, from the Fr. [by J.G. Gurton]. (ed. 1824)

Use, do not abuse neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

• Volatire, "Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738).

Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party.

• Theodore Roosevelt, Address at Milwaukee, Wis., October, 14, 1912.

Carmina spreta exolescunt; si irascare, agnita videntur—Abuse, if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

• Tacitus, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

I know no evil under the sun so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common. It has diffused itself through both sexes, and all qualities of mankind, and there is hardly that person to be found who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than of honesty and virtue. But this unhappy affectation of being wise rather than honest, witty than good natured, is the source of most of the ill-habits of life. Such false impressions are owing to the abandoned writings of men of wit, and the awkward imitation of the rest of mankind.

• Sir Richard Steele, The Spectator, Volume 1.

Lampoon. A personal satire; abuse; censure written not to reform but to vex.

• Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

It concerns all who think it worth while to be in earnest with their immortal souls not to abuse themselves with a false confidence; a thing so easily taken up, and so hardly laid down.

• Robert South, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Or as the wife that hath her husband wronged,
So will I come with fear and blushing cheek,
For giving others what to thee belonged,
And say, “My King, my Lord, and Spouse most meek,
I have defiled the bed that thou didst owe;
Forgive me this, it shall no more be so.”
Yet, for the world can witness mine abuse,
I’ll hide my face from face that witched mine eyes;
These graceless eyes, that had my body’s use,
Till it be withered with my very cries,
That when my wrinkles shall my sorrows tell,
The world may say, I joy’d not, though I fell.

• "The Passion of a Discontented Mind."

I did sometime laugh and scoff with Lucian, and satirically tax with Menippus, lament with Heraclitus, sometimes again I was petulanti splene chachinno, and then again, urere bilis jecur, I was much moved to see that abuse which I could not mend. In which passion howsoever I may sympathise with him or them, 'tis for no such respect I shroud myself under his name; but either in an unknown habit to assume a little more liberty and freedom of speech, or if you will needs know, for that reason and only respect which Hippocrates relates at large in his Epistle to Damegetus, wherein he doth express, how coming to visit him one day, he found Democritus in his garden at Abdera, in the suburbs, under a shady bower, with a book on his knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. The subject of his book was melancholy and madness; about him lay the carcases of many several beasts, newly by him cut up and anatomised; not that he did contemn God's creatures, as he told Hippocrates, but to find out the seat of this atra bilis, or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings and observation teach others how to prevent and avoid it. Which good intent of his, Hippocrates highly commended: Democritus Junior is therefore bold to imitate, and because he left it imperfect, and it is now lost, quasi succenturiator Democriti, to revive again, prosecute, and finish in this treatise.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” THE DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER.

Wotan
(seating himself quietly on a stone)
We wait for him here.
(Alberich, who has removed the Tarnhelm from his
head and hung it on his girdle, drives before him,
with brandished whip, a host of Nibelungs from the
caverns below. They are laden with gold and silver
handiwork, which, under Alberich's continuous
abuse and scolding, they heap together so as to form
a large pile.)

• Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, Act 3.

Must I first tell of the scourge
that has so often visited German soil from the East?
In the furthest marches of the realm you bade women and children pray:
"Dear Lord, save us from the wrath of the Hungarians!"
But it was I, head of the Empire, who saw fit
to plan an end to such dreadful humiliation;
victory in battle brought me peace
for nine years - this I used to protect the Empire;
I ordered fortified towns and castles to be built
and used the levy as a resistence army.
But now this period is over, the taxes are being denied us
and with threats the enemy is arming itself.
Now it is time to defend the Empire's honour;
East and West, to all I say:
let every acre of German soil put forth troops of solidiers,
never again shall anyone abuse the German Empire!

• Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, Act One.

I thought I read good news in his features, but when my brother-in-law asked him what he thought of my work, he answered quietly and calmly, ‘There is not a single good note in it!’ My brother-in-law, who was accustomed to Kuhnlein’s eccentricity, gave a loud laugh which reassured me somewhat. It was impossible to get any advice or coherent reasons for his opinion out of Kuhnlein; he merely renewed his abuse of Weber and made some references to Mozart which, nevertheless, made a deep impression upon me, as Kuhnlein’s language was always very heated and emphatic.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

I had genially confirmed him in this depreciation of the subject matter in opera; and was therefore the more startled when, on finding him at my sister Louisa’s the day after the first performance, he straightway overwhelmed me with a scornful outburst of irritation at my success. But he found in me a strange sense of the essential unreality in opera of such a subject as that which I had just illustrated with so much success in Rienzi, so that, oppressed by a secret sense of shame, I had no serious rejoinder to offer to his candidly poisonous abuse. My line of defence was not yet sufficiently clear in my own mind to be available offhand, nor was it yet backed by so obvious a product of my own peculiar genius that I could venture to quote it. Moreover, my first impulse was only one of pity for the unlucky playwright, which I felt all the more constrained to express, because his burst of fury gave me the inward satisfaction of knowing that he recognised my great success, of which I was not yet quite clear myself.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

Lüttichau’s altered attitude towards me was such that for some time our intercourse on matters of business assumed an almost confidential tone. But, unfortunately, in course of time things changed for the worse, so that our relationship became one of open enmity; nevertheless, a certain peculiar tenderness towards me on the part of this singular man was always clearly perceptible. Indeed, I might almost say that much of his subsequent abuse of me sounded more like the strangely perverted plaints of a love that met with no response.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

If it is abuse,—why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned goodnatured friend or another!

• Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 1, sc. 1

I do swear by this city ˹of Mecca˺—
even though you ˹O Prophet˺ are subject to abuse in this city—
and by every parent and ˹their˺ child!
Indeed, We have created humankind in ˹constant˺ struggle.
Do they think that no one has power over them,
boasting, “I have wasted enormous wealth!”?
Do they think that no one sees them?
Have We not given them two eyes,
a tongue, and two lips;
and shown them the two ways ˹of right and wrong˺?
If only they had attempted the challenging path ˹of goodness instead˺!

• Qu'ran, "Al-Balad" (The City) 90:1-11, Saheeh International

Supreme power may be lost by an abuse of power.

• "The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave."

Abusus non tollit usum—Abuse is no argument against use.

• Proverb.

Les plaisirs sont amers si tôt qu’on en abuse—Pleasures become bitter as soon as they are abused.

• Proverb.

White geese who strip men of their cloaks (Git. 73a).
Men in responsible positions—vested with the white mantles of honour—who abuse their office for their selfish ends.

• Proverb.

Abusus non tollit usum = Abuse does not nullify proper use.

• Proverb.

إذا كان حبيبك عسل ما تلحسوش كله
“Even if friend is honey, don’t lick them all up.” Don’t abuse the kindness of a friend.

• Proverb.

Are you not accustomed to look at home, when you abuse others?

• Proverb.

Abuse doesn’t hang on the collar.

• Russian Proverb.

Glory lies still; abuse is running.

• Russian Proverb.

Abu ‘Abdullah ‘Amr ibn al-‘As reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “One of the major wrong actions is for a man to abuse his parents.” They asked, “O Messenger of Allah, is it possible for a man to abuse his parents?” He replied, “Yes. He may curse another man’s father who in turn curses his father, and curse his mother and he in turn curses his mother.”

• Prophet Muhammad, Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 338

This use and advantage then there is in abusing one's enemy, and no less arises from being abused and ill-spoken of oneself by one's enemies. And so Antisthenes said well that those who wish to lead a good life ought to have genuine friends or red-hot enemies; for the former deterred you from what was wrong by reproof, the latter by abuse.

• Plutarch, Morals, How a Man May be Benefited by his Enemies.

Contumeliam si dicis, audies—If you utter abuse, you must expect to receive it.

• Plautus, James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

The mode of printing this little work may appear too expensive, either for its merits or its length. However inimical this practice confessedly is, to the general diffusion of knowledge, yet it was adopted in this instance with a view of excluding the multitude from the abuse of a mode of reasoning, liable to misconstruction on account of its novelty.

• "The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley/A Refutation of Deism: in a Dialogue."

Before attacking an abuse we must find out if its foundations can be destroyed.

• Marquis de Vauvenargues, Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims. Elizabeth Lee, trans. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903; Bartleby.com, 2011.

Ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia—The abuse of a thing is no argument against its use.

• Law Saying.

Ex abusu non arguitur ad usum—There is no arguing from the abuse of a thing against the use of it.

• Law Saying.

Ex abusu non argumentum ad desuetudinem—The abuse of a thing is no argument for its discontinuance.

• Law Saying.

But if it be thought that the Disciples offended at the rigour of Christs answer, could yet obtain no mitigation of the former sentence pronounc't to the Pharises, it may be fully answer'd, that our Saviour continues the same reply to his Disciples, as men leaven'd with the same customary licence, which the Pharises maintain'd, and displeas'd at the removing of a traditionall abuse wherto they had so long not unwillingly bin us'd: it was no time then to contend with their slow and prejudicial belief, in a thing wherin an ordinary measure of light in Scripture, with some attention might afterwards informe them well anough. And yet ere Christ had finisht this argument, they might have pickt out of his own concluding words, an answer more to their minds, and in effect the same with that which hath been all this while entreating audience. All men, said he, cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given, he that is able to receive it let him receive it.

• John Milton, “The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce: Book 2.” CHAP. IX.

Now that many licentious and hard hearted men took hold of this Law to cloak their bad purposes, is nothing strange to beleeve. And these were they, not for whom Moses made the Law, God forbid, but whose hardnes of heart taking ill advantage by this Law he held it better to suffer as by accident, where it could not be detected, rather then good men should loose their just and lawfull priviledge of remedy: Christ therfore having to answer these tempting Pharises, according as his custom was, not meaning to inform their proud ignorance what Moses did in the true intent of the Law, which they had ill cited, suppressing the true cause for which Moses gave it, and extending it to every slight matter, tells them their own, what Moses was forc't to suffer by their abuse of his Law.

• John Milton, “The Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce: Book 2.” CHAP. VIII.

Non fu mai opinione, senza abusione. (There was never an opinion without abuse.)

• John Florio, Giardino Di Ricreatione.

Men abuse the best things. That philosophic spirit so much in fashion today which tries to comprehend everything and to take nothing for granted extends even into belles-lettres. Some claim that it is even harmful to their progress, and indeed it is difficult to conceal that fact. Our century, which is inclined toward combination and analysis, seems to desire to introduce frigid and didactic discussions into things of sentiment. It is not that the passions and tastes do not have their own sort of logic, but their logic has principles completely different from those of ordinary logic; these principles must be unraveled within us, and it must be confessed that ordinary philosophy is quite unsuited for the task. Totally immersed in the analysis of our perceptions, philosophy disentangles their nuances much more readily when the soul is in a state of tranquillity than when it is in the throes of passions or of the lively sentiments which affect us. In truth, how could it possibly be easy to analyze such feelings as these with precision? We must indeed surrender ourselves to them in order to know them, even though the moment in which the soul is affected by them is the very time when it is least capable of study.

• "Preliminary Discourse." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009.

You will have a great deal of unreserved discourse with Mrs. K., I dare say, upon this subject, as well as upon many other of our family matters. Abuse everybody but me.

• Jane Austen, Letter to Cassandra (1807-01-07).

Shadows and distance do abuse the eye,
And in abusèd sense truth oft miscarries :
Yet who this language to the people speaks,
Opinion's empire sense's idol breaks.

• Jokinen, Anniina. “Fulke Greville. ‘Caelica.’ Sonnet LV.” Luminarium.org, 14 Jan. 2000, www.luminarium.org/renlit/caelica55.htm. Accessed 7 May 2024.

‘’Abuse of the conscientious.’’—The conscientious, and not the unscrupulous ones, have been the greatest sufferers from the weariness of lenten sermons and brimstone theology, especially if they happened to be of an imaginative mind. Thus a gloom has been castover the lives of the very people who needed cheerfulness and pleasant images—not only for the sake of their recovery and the relief from themselves, but in order that humanity might rejoice in them and absorb, a small ray of their beauty. Oh, how inch super-fluous cruelty and torment have proceeded from those religions which have invented sin, and from those people who, by means of it, wish to reach the highest summit of their power.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 1."

Use law and physic only for necessity; they that use them otherwise abuse themselves into weak bodies, and light purses; they are good remedies, bad businesses, and worse recreations.

• Francis Quarles, Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles (ed. 1844).

So use prosperity, that adversity may not abuse thee: if in the one, security admits no fears, in the other, despair will afford no hopes; be that in prosperity can foretell a danger can in adversity foresee deliverance.

• Francis Quarles, Uniform with the Enchiridion: Spare Minutes Or Resolved Meditations and Premeditated Resolutions (ed. 1822).

There was one that found a great mass of money digging under ground in his grandfather's house: and being somewhat doubtful of the case, signified it to the emperor that he had found such treasure. The emperor made a rescript thus: "Use it." He writ back again, that the sum was greater than his estate or condition could use. The emperor writ a new rescript thus: "Abuse it."

• Francis Bacon, Apophthegms New and Old, pg. 33. Apophthegm No. 177

Plaustra conviciis onusta (Carts loaded with abuse).

• Koning, Paula. “Erasmus Adagia.” Www.let.leidenuniv.nl, 1703, www.let.leidenuniv.nl/Dutch/Latijn/ErasmusAdagia.html.

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.

• Epictetus, Enchiridion, chapter 20.

There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.

• Edmund Burke, Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq., Member of Parliament for the City of Bristol (ed. 1780).

It is only to complete the view I proposed of the conduct of the Company with regard to the dependent provinces, that I shall say any thing at all of the Carnatic, which is the scene, if possible, of greater disorder than the northern provinces. Perhaps it were better to say of this centre and metropolis of abuse, whence all the rest in India and in England diverge, from whence they are fed and methodized, what was said of Carthage, “De Carthagine satius est silere quam parum dicere.” This country, in all its denominations, is about 46,000 square miles. It may be affirmed, universally, that not one person of substance or property, landed, commercial, or moneyed, excepting two or three bankers, who are necessary deposits and distributors of the general spoil, is left in all that region. In that country, the moisture, the bounty of Heaven, is given but at a certain season. Before the era of our influence, the industry of man carefully husbanded that gift of God. The Gentoos preserved, with a provident and religious care, the precious deposit of the periodical rain in reservoirs, many of them works of royal grandeur; and from these, as occasion demanded, they fructified the whole country. To maintain these reservoirs, and to keep up an annual advance to the cultivators for seed and cattle, formed a principal object of the piety and policy of the priests and rulers of the Gentoo religion.

• Edmund Burke, Speech on Mr. Fox’s East India Bill, Dec. 1, 1783.

With regard, therefore, to the abuse of the external federal trust, I engage myself to you to make good these three positions. First, I say, that from Mount Imaus (or whatever else you call that large range of mountains that walls the northern frontier of India), where it touches us in the latitude of twenty-nine, to Cape Comorin, in the latitude of eight, that there is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India, with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold: I say sold, though sometimes they have not been able to deliver according to their bargain. Secondly, I say, that there is not a single treaty they have ever made which they have not broken. Thirdly, I say, that there is not a single prince or state, who ever put any trust in the Company, who is not utterly ruined; and that none are in any degree secure or flourishing, but in the exact proportion to their settled distrust and irreconcilable enmity to this nation.

• Edmund Burke, Speech on Mr. Fox’s East India Bill, Dec. 1, 1783.

How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?

• Cicero, First Speech against Catiline.

It has been shrewdly said, that when men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.

• Charles Caleb Colton, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.

• Charles Caleb Colton, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Alitheus: I cannot simply ignore, however, the most terrible abuse of all. This is an evil all our citizens should be trying to stop like a plague. While Italy in general has enjoyed great peace in recent years, what could be more shameful than to find that all our citizens, but for a few, have been drained by heavy taxes? These resources, moreover, collected on the excuse of purchasing agricultural surpluses or on some other stupid pretext, have all been diverted to serve one man’s pleasures. No need to wonder, now, how they get all the money for urban and rural building at once, or where the money comes from to feed such crowds of horses, dogs, birds, actors, sycophants, and parasites. So much spent in so few months does in itself invalidate the impression of private wealth he supposedly wants to give. And he openly admits that he does not have to pay his debts. He has always extorted money on any pretext from all sides, from friend as well as stranger. He has always assumed that Fortune will always favor him, so that he can freely use the wealth of others, public or private, as his own.

• Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogue on Liberty, bk 1, 1479.

And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use.

• Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam. cxi. Stanza 6.

Accident

No scientific discovery can, with any justice, be considered due to accident. In whatever manner facts may be presented to the notice of a discoverer, they can never become the materials of exact knowledge, except they find his mind already provided with precise and suitable conceptions by which they may be analyzed and connected.

• William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: Founded Upon Their History, Volume 2.

There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see.

• Voltaire, Letters concerning the English Nation... A new edition (ed. 1760).

Neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident.

• Thomas Carlyle, Lectures on heroes, hero-worship (ed. 1886).

From his old days in Paris he had retained the habit of placing the two oboists immediately behind him, and although this was a fad which owed its origin to a mere accident, it was one to which he always adhered. The consequence was that these players had to avert the mouthpiece of their instruments from the audience, and our excellent oboist was so angry about this arrangement, that it was only by dint of great diplomacy that I succeeded in pacifying him.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

Therefore, after a few days’ rest in the inn at Arnau, we drove to the little seaport town of Pillau, again accompanied by Möller, in one of the ordinary local conveyances, which was not much better than a wagon. In order to avoid Königsberg, we passed through the smaller villages and over bad roads. Even this short distance was not to be covered without accident. The clumsy conveyance upset in a farmyard, and Minna was so severely indisposed by the accident, owing to an internal shock, that I had to drag her—with the greatest difficulty, as she was quite helpless—to a peasant’s house. The people were surly and dirty, and the night we spent there was a painful one for the poor sufferer. A delay of several days occurred before the departure of the Pillau vessel, but this was welcome as a respite to allow of Minna’s recovery. Finally, as the captain was to take us without a passport, our going on board was accompanied by exceptional difficulties. We had to contrive to slip past the harbour watch to our vessel in a small boat before daybreak.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

Not being far enough advanced in the language to understand the Greek tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own attempts to construct a tragedy in the Greek form were greatly influenced by the fact that quite by accident I came across August Apel’s clever imitation of this style in his striking poems ‘Polyidos’ and ‘Aitolier.’ For my theme I selected the death of Ulysses, from a fable of Hyginus, according to which the aged hero is killed by his son, the offspring of his union with Calypso. But I did not get very far with this work either, before I gave it up.

• Richard Wagner, My Life.

Till some admirable or unusual accident happens, as it hath in some, to work the beginning of a better alteration in the mind, disputation about the knowledge of God commonly prevaileth little.

• Richard Hooker, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

How hard is it when accident triumphs over design!

• "The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave."

A ridiculous accident has often been the making of many.

• Proverb.

To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?

• Oliver Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield. Ch. XIX.

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter."

I think it a very happy accident.

• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. lviii.

A gentleman at Paris was lately cut for the stone by order of the physicians, in whose bladder, being accordingly so cut, there was found no more stone than in the palm of his hand; and in the same place a bishop, who was my particular friend, having been earnestly pressed by the majority of the physicians whom he consulted, to suffer himself to be cut, to which also, upon their word, I used my interest to persuade him, when he was dead and opened, it appeared that he had no malady but in the kidneys. They are least excusable for any error in this disease, by reason that it is in some sort palpable; and 'tis thence that I conclude surgery to be much more certain, by reason that it sees and feels what it does, and so goes less upon conjecture; whereas the physicians have no 'speculum matricis', by which to examine our brains, lungs, and liver.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II Chapter XXXVII. Of the resemblance of children to their fathers. Note: Medical accident.

And thus thou canst remark that every act
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
As body is, nor has like name with void;
But rather of sort more fitly to be called
An accident of body, and of place
Wherein all things go on.

• “The Internet Classics Archive | on the Nature of Things by Lucretius.” Translated by William Ellery Leonard. Book I.

It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune-the ally of patient Time-that holds an even and scrupulous balance.

• Joseph Conrad, Marlow, in Lord Jim, ch. 34 (1900).

The smallest accident intervening often produces such changes that a wise man is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and unexperienced.

• Jonathan Swift, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

She heard them give thee this, that thou should'st still
From eyes of mortals walk invisible,
Yet there is something that doth force my fear,
For once it was my dismal hap to hear
A Sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in times long and dark Prospective Glass
Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass,
Your Son, said she, (nor can you it prevent)
Shall subject be to many an Accident.

• John Milton, “At a Vacation Exercise: Text.”

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Translated by Bailey Saunders (1892).

It requires a certain degree of knowledge and scientific combination to understand and seize upon the facts which have originated in accident.

• Humphry Davy.

There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.

• Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (ed. 1873).

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours.

• Henry David Thoreau, Journal, ed. by B. Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861 (ed. 1906).

Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage.

• Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907).

Give it back to me, by all the horns of the Styx, and let me settle it again on my shoulders. And you, take your club, and hasten to heaven to excuse me with Jove for this accident, which is entirely owing to you.

• Giacomo Leopardi, Essays and Dialogues.

Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word "accident" makes sense.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: Book III - Aphorism # 109.

He that would make a Great Man, must learn to turn every Accident to some Advantage.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

There is no Accident so exquisitely unfortunate, but wise Men will make some advantage of it; nor any so intirely fortunate, but Fools may turn it to their own Prejudice.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them.

• ‌“The Internet Classics Archive | the Enchiridion by Epictetus.” Translated by Elizabeth Carter.

Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.

• David Hume, The Philosophical Works (ed. 1964).

There is, then, sufficient foundation to conjecture that if by any accident our globe should become displaced, all its productions would of necessity be changed; seeing that causes being no longer the same, or no longer acting after the same manner, the effects would necessarily no longer be what they now are, all productions, that they may be able to conserve themselves, or maintain their actual existence, have occasion to co-order themselves with the whole from which they have emanated. Without this they would no longer be in a capacity to subsist: it is this faculty of co-ordering themselves,--this relative adaption, which is called the ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE: the want of it is called CONFUSION.

• ‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 6.”

O man! wilt thou never conceive, that thou art but an ephemeron? All changes in the great macrocosm: nothing remains the same an instant, in the planet thou inhabitest: Nature contains no one constant form, yet thou pretendest thy species can never disappear; that thou shalt be exempted from the universal law, that wills all shall experience change! Alas! In thy actual being, art not thou submitted to continual alterations? Thou, who in thy folly, arrogantly assumest to thyself the title of KING OF NATURE! Thou, who measurest the earth and the heavens! Thou, who in thy vanity imaginest, that the whole was made, because thou art intelligent! There requires but a very slight accident, a single atom to be displaced, to make thee perish; to degrade thee; to ravish from thee this intelligence of which thou appearest so proud.

• ‌‌Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 6.”

Action

How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections.

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Her springs of action are few, but they never wear out: they are always working, always manifold.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Lange Ueberlegungen zeigen gewöhnlich, dass man den Punkt nicht im Auge hat, von dem die Rede ist; übereilte Handlungen, dass man ihn gar nicht kennt—Long pondering on a matter usually indicates that one has not properly got his eye on the point at issue; and too hasty action that he does not know it at all.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Essay to do thy duty, and thou knowest at once what is in thee.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

He who conforms to the rule which the genius of the human understanding whispers secretly in the ear of every new-born being, viz., to test action by thought and thought by action, cannot err; and if he errs, he will soon find himself again in the right way.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Free will I be in thought and in poetry; in action the world hampers us enough.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Der Sinn erweitert, aber lähmt; die That belebt, aber beschränkt—Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Dem thätigen Menschen kommt es darauf an, dass er das Rechte thue; ob das Rechte geschehe, soll ihn nicht kümmern—With the man of action the chief concern is that he do the right thing; the success of that ought not to trouble him.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Auch in der That ist Raum für Ueberlegung—Even in the moment of action there is room for consideration.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.

• Johann Kaspar Lavater, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.

• Johann Kaspar Lavater, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

He is incapable of a truly good action who knows not the pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.

• Johann Kaspar Lavater, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.

• Johann Kaspar Lavater, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

In every action reflect upon the end; and in your undertaking it consider why you do it.

• Jeremy Taylor, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

A wise man’s behaviour turns on two pivots, the past and the future. If he has a good memory and a keen foresight, he runs no danger of censuring in others what perhaps he has done himself, or of condemning an action which, in a parallel case, and in like circumstances, he sees it will be impossible for him to avoid.

• The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.

• James Russell Lowell, My Study Windows (ed. 1871)

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

• James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays, vol. II (1870-1890) - Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.

We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

• Immanuel Kant, Theory of Ethics (ed. 1873).

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.

• Honoré de Balzac, Louis Lambert (ed. The Floating Press, 2011).

It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.

• Honoré de Balzac, Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical (1917).

If a man is cruel by nature, cruel in action,
the mortal world will call down curses on his head
while he is alive, and all will mock his memory after death.
But then if a man is kind by nature, kind in action,
his guests will carry his fame across the earth
and people all will praise him from the heart.

• Homer, The Odyssey

No action, whether foul or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Author's complete ed (ed. 1872).

All the means of action, the shapeless masses—the materials—lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius!

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student, Houghton Mifflin & Co. 1882.

There are two angels that attend unseen
Each one of us, and in great books record
Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down
The good ones, after every action closes
His volume, and ascends with it to God.
The other keeps his dreadful day-book open
Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing,
The record of the action fades away,
And leaves a line of white across the page.
Now if my act be good, as I believe it,
It cannot be recalled. It is already
Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished.
The rest is yours.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Two Angels.

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

• Henry David Thoreau, A Yankee in Canada: With Anti-slavery and Reform Papers (ed. 1866).

... by action on man all known force may be measured. Indeed, few men of science measured force in any other way. After once admitting that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything that suited his convenience, and rejected no symbol, proved or unproveable, that helped him to accomplish work. The symbol was force, as a compass-needle or a triangle was force.

• Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907).

Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.

• George Washington, Rules of Civility. Precept #1, pg. 27.

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

• George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (ed. 1873).

The right word is always a power and communicates its definiteness to our action.

• George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871).

For strong souls
Live like fire-hearted suns; to spend their strength
In furthest striving action.

• George Eliot.

I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.

• George Bernard Shaw, Four Plays by Bernard Shaw (ed. Pocket Books, 1968).

You must take action yourself, for Gautama Buddhas only teach the way.

• Gautama Buddha.

When action comes out of nothing it creates no karma.

• Gautama Buddha.

This Ariyan Eightfold Path, that is to say: Right view, right aim, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right contemplation.

• Gautama Buddha.

The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.

• Gautama Buddha.

Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.

• Gautama Buddha.

A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smouldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrongdoer, the fool.

• Gautama Buddha.

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

• Gautama Buddha.

The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead.

• G. K. Chesterton, Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 17).

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

• G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (ed. 1909).

Das Wort ist frei, die That ist stumm, der Gehorsam blind—The word is free, action dumb, obedience blind.

• Friedrich Schiller.

Human action is a seed of circumstances (Verhängnissen) scattered in the dark land of the future and hopefully left to the powers that rule human destiny.

• Friedrich Schiller.

The empire of Saturnus is gone by;
Lord of the secret birth of things is he;
Within the lap of earth, and in the depths
Of the imagination dominates;
And his are all things that eschew the light.
The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance,
For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now,
And the dark work, complete of preparation,
He draws by force into the realm of light.
Now must we hasten on to action, ere
The scheme, and most auspicious positure
Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight,
For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.

• Friedrich Schiller, Act I, sc. i - Wallenstein (1798) - Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein).

But we ought not to stand in the doorway for long; we should soon leave the first stages, and ask the question, seriously and definitely, "Is it possible to bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it should educate us, or 'lead us out' as well as lead us upward?"—in order that the great words of Goethe be not fulfilled in our case—"Man is born to a state of limitation: he can understand ends that are simple, present and definite, and is accustomed to make use of means that are near to his hand; but as soon as he comes into the open, he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought to do, and it is all one whether he be confused by the multitude of objects or set beside himself by their greatness and importance. It is always his misfortune to be led to strive after something which he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his own." The objection can be made with apparent reason against Schopenhauer's man, that his greatness and dignity can only turn our heads, and put us beyond all community with the active men of the world: the common round of duties, the noiseless tenor of life has disappeared. One man may possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;—becoming unstable, daily weaker and less productive:—while another will renounce all action on principle, and scarcely endure to see others active. The danger is always great when a man is too heavy-laden, and cannot really accomplish any duties. Stronger natures may be broken by it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink into a speculative laziness, and at last, from their laziness, lose even the power of speculation.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator."

They all steer a new course, amid the loud condemnation of the representatives of a morality of custom--they detach themselves from the community, as immoral people, and are evil in tile deepest sense of the word. Thus to a virtuous Roman of the older type, every Christian whose fore- most goal was his own salvation" must have appeared evil. Wherever there is a community and, consequently, a morality of custom, the sentiment predominates that the punishment for every offence against custom falls, above all, on the community. I am referring to that supernatural punishment, the visitations and limits of which are so difficult to comprehend and form the subject of so much anxious investigation and superstitions four. The community is able to insist on each one of its members making amends to other individuals or the community for the immediate injury which may have followed in the train of his action. It may also wreak a kind of vengeance on the individual for causing the clouds and storm of divine wrath, as supposed effects of his action, to gather over the heads of the community. But it feels every offence of the individual chiefly as its own, and bears the punishment of the one as its own:- “Custom," they wail in their utmost hearts, "has grown lax, if such actions as these are possible." Every individual action, every individual mode of thinking, causes a horror.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 1."

Works and faith.—Protestant teachers go on spreading that fundamental error: that faith is the only thing essential, and that faith must necessarily be followed by works. This is by no means true, but sounds so plausible that even prior to Luther's time it lad misled such intellects as those of Socrates and Plato; though it is inconsistent with the evidence of all our daily life's every experience. The most positive knowlege or faith camot give us either the strength or the skill required for action, it can not supply the practice of that subtle soul multifarious mechanism, which must have gone before in order that a change may be effected from an idea into action. First and foremost let us have the works, that is, practice, practice, practice! The requisite faith will come in due time―be sure of that!

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 1."

Mood as an argument.—What is the cause of a cheerful readiness for action? This is a question which has greatly preoccupied mankind. The most ancient and still familiar answer is: God is the cause; by it He intimates to us that He approves of our purpose. When, in times past, people consulted the oracles about some design or other, they did so for the purpose of returning home, fortified by that cheerful readiness; and, in the case of several possible actions presenting themselves to the mind, any doubt arising was always met by: "I shall do that which will cause the aforesaid sensation." Hence they did not decide upon the most rational plan, but upon some design which instilled courage and hope into the soul, while dwelling upon it. The right mood was put as an argument into the scales and weighed down reasonableness: because mood was interpreted in a superstitious way as the influence of a God who promises success and, by means of this influence, causes His reason to weak as the highest rationality. Now consider the consequences of such a prejudice, when shrewd men, full of the lust of power, availed—and avail—themselves of it. Produce the right mood and you may dispense with all arguments and overcome all counter-Arguments.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 1."

The alleged contest of motives.—We speak of the “contest of motives," but imply a contest which is not the contest of motives. That is, in our meditative consciousness the results of divers actions successively come to the front; we imagine ourselves capable of accomplishing them all, and compare these results. We imagine that we have decided upon an action, when we have convinced ourselves that its results will be generally auspicious; before we arrive at this final conclusion we often honestly worry about the great difficulty of guessing the consequences, of seeing them in their full importance, indeed, all of them, without omission; in which case the number obtained has still to be divided by chance. To mention the principal difficulty: All the results which, singly, call only he anticipated with great trouble, now have to be balanced on the same scales against one another; and it so often happens that for this casuistry of advantage, owing to the difference in quality of all these possible results, both scales and weights are found wanting. But suppose that even here we were able to get to a satisfactory issue, and that chance had placed in our scales results which admit mutual balancing, we now have indeed in the picture of the results of a certain action a motive for doing this very action—yea, one motive! But at the moment of our eventual action we are pretty frequently influenced by a set of motives other than those under discussion, that is those of the “pictorial group of results."

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 2."

Consider!—He, who is being punished is no longer the same who has done the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 4."

Parentheses—At any manifestation of human action we are at liberty to ask, What is it to conceal? From what purpose is it to divert the eye? What prejudice does it wish to arouse? And, in addition, How far goes the subtlety of this simulation? And wherein is the doer mistaken?

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 5."

WHAT ONE MAY PROMISE.—One may promise actions, but no sentiments, for these are involuntary. Whoever promises to love or hate a person, or be faithful to him for ever, promises something which is not within his power; he can certainly promise such actions as are usually the results of love, hate, or fidelity, but which may also spring from other motives ; for many ways and motives lead to one and the same action. The promise to love some one for ever is, therefore, really : So long as I love you I will act towards you in a loving way ; if I cease to love you, you will still receive the same treatment from me, although inspired by other motives, so that our fellow-men will still be deluded into the belief that our love is unchanged and ever the same. One promises therefore, the continuation of the semblance of love, when, without self-deception, one speaks vows of eternal love.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

A MODE OF SETTLEMENT.—It often suffices to give a person whom we have injured an opportunity to make a joke about us to give him personal satisfaction, and even to make him favourably disposed to us.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

HOW COURAGEOUS PEOPLE ARE WON OVER.—Courageous people are persuaded to a course of action by representing it as more dangerous than it really is.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

CALMNESS IN ACTION.—As a cascade in its descent becomes more deliberate and suspended, so the great man of action usually acts with more calmness than his strong passions previous to action would lead one to expect.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT.--Happy chances are necessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth," as one might say--at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen; and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late--the chance which gives "permission" to take action--when their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has said to himself--and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.--In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception, but the rule?--Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but rather the five hundred HANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize over the χαιροζ, "the right time"--in order to take chance by the forelock!

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil/Chapter IX."

The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects...

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations (ed. Stanford University Press, 1999).

Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action tends to act with greater calmness than his tempestuous desires prior to the deed would lead one to expect.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (ed. Cambridge University Press, 1996).

He who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil, tr. by Helen Zimmern (ed. 1911).

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

• Franz Kafka, Aphorisms (1918).

Compleat Courage, and absolute Cowardice, are Extremes that very few Men fall into. The vast middle Space contains all the intermediate Kinds, and Degrees of Courage; and these differ as much from one another, as Men’s Faces, or their Humours do. Some Men venture at all upon the first Charge or two, but if the Action continue, they cool, and are easily dejected. Some satisfie themselves with having done what in strict Honour was necessary, and will not be prevailed upon to advance one Step farther. It is observable, that some have not the command of their Fears, at all Times alike. Others are sometimes carried away with a general Consternation; some throw themselves into the Action, because they dare not stay at their own Post. Now and then the being used to smaller Dangers hardens the Courage, and fits it for venturing upon greater. Some Fellows value not a Sword at all, but fear a Musket-Shot; and others are as unconcerned at the Discharge of a Musket, and ready to run at the sight of a naked Sword. All these couragious Men of so many Sorts and Sizes, agree in this, that Night, as it adds to their Fear, so it conceals what they do well or ill, and gives them opportunity of sparing themselves. And there is, besides this, another more general Tenderness of a Man’s self, for you meet with no body, even those that do most, but they would be capable of doing a great deal more still, if they could but be sure of coming off safe. Which makes it very plain, that let a Man be never so Stoat, yet the Fear of Death does certainly give some damp to his Courage.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Though an Action be never so Glorious in it self, it ought not to pass for Great, if it be not the Effect of Wisdom, and good Design.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Wouldst thou know the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to Divine blessing: if it be lawful, thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful, thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.

• Francis Quarles, C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.

• Francis Quarles, C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

First, therefore, amongst so many great foundations of colleges in Europe, I find strange that they are all dedicated to professions, and none left free to arts and sciences at large. For if men judge that learning should be referred to action, they judge well; but in this they fall into the error described in the ancient fable, in which the other parts of the body did suppose the stomach had been idle, because it neither performed the office of motion, as the limbs do, nor of sense, as the head doth; but yet notwithstanding it is the stomach that digesteth and distributeth to all the rest. So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied. And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. For if you will have a tree bear more fruit than it hath used to do, it is not anything you can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring of the earth and putting new mould about thee roots that must work it. Neither is it to be forgotten, that this dedicating of foundations and dotations to professory learning hath not only had a malign aspect and influence upon the growth of sciences, but hath also been prejudicial to states, and governments. For hence it proceedeth that princes find a solitude in regard of able men to serve them in causes of estate, because there is no education collegiate which is free, where such as were so disposed might give themselves in histories, modern languages, books of policy and civil discourse, and other the like enablements unto service of estate.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

The advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three: first, to lay asleep opposition, and to surprise; for where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them: the second is, to reserve to a man's self a fair retreat; for if a man engage himself by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall: the third is, the better to discover the mind of another; for to him that opens himself men will hardly show themselves averse; but will fain let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought; and therefore it is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard, "Tell a lie and find a truth;" as if there were no way of discovery but by simulation. There be also three disadvantages to set it even; the first, that simulation and dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark; the second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that, perhaps, would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends; the third, and greatest, is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action, which is trust and belief. The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign if there be no remedy.

• The Essays of Francis Bacon: The Fifty-Nine Essays, Complete. Adansonia Press, 2018. Of Simulation and Dissimulation, pg. 13.

The curse of me & my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

• Ezra Pound, The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce (1968).

That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time.

• Euripides, Trojan Women.

Initio confidens, in facto timidus. (Confident at the Beginning, Timid in Action.)

• Erasmus, “Erasmus Adagia.” Www.let.leidenuniv.nl, 1703, www.let.leidenuniv.nl/Dutch/Latijn/ErasmusAdagia.html. Accessed 2 June 2024. Translated by Joseph Diaz.

The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.
Epictetus, How Nobleness of Mind may be consistent with Prudence. Chap. v.

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man. That we ought not to be angry with Mankind.
Epictetus, Discourses, Chap. xxviii.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

• Edwin Hubbell Chapin, Living Words (ed. 1861).

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 277.

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.

• Edger Allen Poe, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (ed. 1849).

If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.

• Edger Allen Poe, Tales (ed. 1845).

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

• Denis Diderot, Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774).

There is not a Musselman alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.

• Denis Diderot, Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774).

ME: I don’t know which gives me greater horror – the evil of your renegade or your style of speaking about him.
HIM: That’s the very thing I was telling you. The atrocity of the action takes you beyond contempt, and that’s the reason why I’m so sincere. I wanted you to understand how I excelled in my art and to pull out of you the admission that I was at least original in my degradation. I wanted to give you the idea that I belonged in the line of great scoundrels and then to shout to myself, “Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator!” [Long live Mascarillus, emperor of the rogues” ] Come, Mr. Philosopher, sing along, “Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator!”

• Denis Diderot, “Rameau’s Nephew.”

ME: If the course of action I’m suggesting doesn’t suit you, then have the courage to be a beggar.
HIM: It’s hard to be poor, as long as there are so many wealthy idiots one can rely upon for one’s living. And then contempt for oneself, that’s unbearable.

• Denis Diderot, “Rameau’s Nephew.”

The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.

• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. XII.. Of the academical or sceptical Philosophy Part II.

A natural action is it that man speaks;
But whether thus or thus, doth nature leave
To your own art, as seemeth best to you.
Ere I descended to the infernal anguish,
'El' was on earth the name of the Chief Good,
From whom comes all the joy that wraps me round
'Eli' he then was called, and that is proper,
Because the use of men is like a leaf
On bough, which goeth and another cometh.
Upon the mount that highest o'er the wave
Rises was I, in life or pure or sinful,
From the first hour to that which is the second,
As the sun changes quadrant, to the sixth."

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 3/Canto 26."

"Direct," he said, "towards me the keen eyes
Of intellect, and clear will be to thee
The error of the blind, who would be leaders.
The soul, which is created apt to love,
Is mobile unto everything that pleases,
Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 2/Canto 18."

Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear,
To teach me love, to which thou dost refer
Every good action and its contrary."

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 2/Canto 18."

Of her impiety, who changed her form
Into the bird that most delights in singing,
In my imagining appeared the trace;
And hereupon my mind was so withdrawn
Within itself, that from without there came
Nothing that then might be received by it.
Then reigned within my lofty fantasy
One crucified, disdainful and ferocious
In countenance, and even thus was dying.
Around him were the great Ahasuerus,
Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai,
Who was in word and action so entire.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 2/Canto 17."

As soon as we were come to where the dew
Fights with the sun, and, being in a part
Where shadow falls, little evaporates,
Both of his hands upon the grass outspread
In gentle manner did my Master place;
Whence I, who of his action was aware,
Extended unto him my tearful cheeks;
There did he make in me uncovered wholly
That hue which Hell had covered up in me.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 2/Canto 1."

And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,
With open wings and light upon his feet!
His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high,
A sinner did encumber with both haunches,
And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 1/Canto 21."

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

• Confucius, Analects, Section 2 Part 8.

The gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action.

• Confucius, Lunyu: (ed. 1979).

And why need I mention Publius Scipio Nasica who by his own action put down Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of the elder Africanus through his mother Cornelia? Gracchus had stirred up the people and had plotted to prolong his tribuneship, which he had used for purposes of agitation, into a second term, to the ruin of the state. In the midst of the uproar he raised his hand to his head as if he were seeking a kingly crown. The Consul made only a languid protest, but Scipio, calling upon all who would save the state to follow him, wrapped his toga about his left arm and, with the help of the chiefs of the nobility, succeeded in crushing Gracchus, who fleeing to the Capitol, was beaten to death with pieces of the benches and thrown unburied into the Tiber. Nor did this murder, though Nasica avoided a trial and punishment by claiming his privilege as an ambassador, lack a most distinguished apologist. The younger Africanus, in the course of his triumph after the capture of Numantia, was asked by Gnaeus Carbo, a defender of the uprising of Gracchus, what he thought of the killing of his relative and replied without hesitation that he thought he had been justly put to death.

• Coluccio Salutati, On the Tyrant, Ch 2, 1400.

If this person had only read in Macrobius, a most faithful recorder of antiquity, how Cornelius, having bought a piece of land in the market and his bondsmen being called upon for the payment, ordered on the spot as much money to be brought on an ass’s back as was necessary to pay the debt, and that from that time on the cognomen “Asina” was given to the Cornelian family, not in derision but in admiration for this noble action, he would not have wondered at the name.

• Coluccio Salutati, On the Tyrant, Ch 2, 1400.

Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it.

• Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (ed. 1824).

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: Chapter XII.

If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs.

• Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon at His Best (ed. Baker Publishing Group, 1988).

"Stand still" - keep the posture of an upright man, ready for action, expecting further orders, cheerfully and patiently awaiting the directing voice; and it will not be long ere God shall say to you, as distinctly as Moses said it to the people of Israel, "Go forward."

• Charles Spurgeon, Morning by Morning; Or, Daily Readings for the Family Or the Closet... (ed. 1867).

The man of action has to believe, the inquirer has to doubt; the scientific investigator is both.

• Charles Sanders Peirce, In: J.B. Conant, Modern Science and Modern Man, Science and Spiritual Values (p. 103).

When young, we trust ourselves too much, and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan (ed. 1823).

Indeed, for my part, I shall be happy to leave A world where action is not sister to the dream.

• Charles Baudelaire, 66 translations from Charles Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal (ed. Spoon River Poetry Pr, 1985).

There exist certain individuals who are, by nature, given purely to contemplation and are utterly unsuited to action, and who, nevertheless, under a mysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a speed which they themselves would have thought beyond them.

• Charles Baudelaire, The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo (ed. 2001).

To press to an unarmed breast
Those whose trace can be traced
To all the evil they have sown!
This is not only weakness,
It is a bad action.

• Camille Saint-Saëns, Familiar Rhymes/Let's not be too easygoing

The most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action.

• C. S. Lewis, God in the dock; essays on theology and ethics (ed. 1970).

All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly.
The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the least action affects everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important.
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

• "Blaise Pascal/Thoughts/Section 7."

Nevertheless, the late learned Author of The Religion of Nature, (which I send you herewith) has given us a Rule or Scheme, whereby to discover which of our Actions ought to be esteem’d and denominated good, and which evil: It is in short this, “Every Action which is done according to Truth, is good; and every Action contrary to Truth, is evil: To act according to Truth is to use and esteem every Thing as what it is, &c. Thus if A steals a Horse from B, and rides away upon him, he uses him not as what he is in Truth, viz. the Property of another, but as his own, which is contrary to Truth, and therefore evil. ” But, as this Gentleman himself says, (Sect. i. Prop. vi.) “In order to judge rightly what any Thing is, it must be consider’d, not only what it is in one Respect, but also what it may be in any other Respect; and the whole Description of the Thing ought to be taken in:” So in this Case it ought to be consider’d, that A is naturally a covetous Being, feeling an Uneasiness in the want of B’s Horse, which produces an Inclination for stealing him, stronger than his Fear of Punishment for so doing. This is Truth likewise, and A acts according to it when he steals the Horse. Besides, if it is prov’d to be a Truth, that A has not Power over his own Actions, it will be indisputable that he acts according to Truth, and impossible he should do otherwise.

• Benjamin Franklin, “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, 1725,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0028.

i. When a Creature is form’d and endu’d with Life, ’tis suppos’d to receive a Capacity of the Sensation of Uneasiness or Pain.
It is this distinguishes Life and Consciousness from unactive unconscious Matter. To know or be sensible of Suffering or being acted upon is to live; and whatsoever is not so, among created Things, is properly and truly dead.
All Pain and Uneasiness proceeds at first from and is caus’d by Somewhat without and distinct from the Mind itself. The Soul must first be acted upon before it can re-act. In the Beginning of Infancy it is as if it were not; it is not conscious of its own Existence, till it has receiv’d the first Sensation of Pain; then, and not before, it begins to feel itself, is rous’d, and put into Action; then it discovers its Powers and Faculties, and exerts them to expel the Uneasiness. Thus is the Machine set on work; this is Life. We are first mov’d by Pain, and the whole succeeding Course of our Lives is but one continu’d Series of Action with a View to be freed from it. As fast as we have excluded one Uneasiness another appears, otherwise the Motion would cease. If a continual Weight is not apply’d, the Clock will stop. And as soon as the Avenues of Uneasiness to the Soul are choak’d up or cut off, we are dead, we think and act no more.

• Benjamin Franklin, “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, 1725,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0028.

ii. This Uneasiness, whenever felt, produces Desire to be freed from it, great in exact proportion to the Uneasiness.
Thus is Uneasiness the first Spring and Cause of all Action; for till we are uneasy in Rest, we can have no Desire to move, and without Desire of moving there can be no voluntary Motion. The Experience of every Man who has observ’d his own Actions will evince the Truth of this; and I think nothing need be said to prove that the Desire will be equal to the Uneasiness, for the very Thing implies as much: It is not Uneasiness unless we desire to be freed from it, nor a great Uneasiness unless the consequent Desire is great.
I might here observe, how necessary a Thing in the Order and Design of the Universe this Pain or Uneasiness is, and how beautiful in its Place! Let us but suppose it just now banish’d the World entirely, and consider the Consequence of it: All the Animal Creation would immediately stand stock still, exactly in the Posture they were in the Moment Uneasiness departed; not a Limb, not a Finger would henceforth move; we should all be reduc’d to the Condition of Statues, dull and unactive: Here I should continue to sit motionless with the Pen in my Hand thus—and neither leave my Seat nor write one Letter more. This may appear odd at first View, but a little Consideration will make it evident; for ’tis impossible to assign any other Cause for the voluntary Motion of an Animal than its uneasiness in Rest. What a different Appearance then would the Face of Nature make, without it!

• Benjamin Franklin, “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, 1725,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0028.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

• Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair (1870).

Distinction in Speech and Action. By this you gain a position in many places and carry esteem beforehand. It shows itself in everything, in talk, in look, even in gait. It is a great victory to conquer men's hearts: it does not arise from any foolish presumption or pompous talk, but in a becoming tone of authority born of superior talent combined with true merit.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

Find out each Man's Thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at any one. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play. Knowing any man's mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will. Have resort to primary motors, which are not always the highest but more often the lowest part of his nature: there are more dispositions badly organised than well. First guess a man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of will.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

Vary the Mode of Action; not always the same way, so as to distract attention, especially if there be a rival. Not always from first impulse; they will soon recognise the uniformity, and by anticipating, frustrate your designs. It is easy to kill a bird on the wing that flies straight: not so one that twists. Nor always act on second thoughts: they can discern the plan the second time. The enemy is on the watch, great skill is required to circumvent him. The gamester never plays the card the opponent expects, still less that which he wants.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

In the morality of action, the legal principle that both sides are to be heard must not be allowed to apply; in other words, the claims of self and the senses must not be urged. Nay, on the contrary, as soon as the pure will has found expression, the case is closed; nec audienda altera pars.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Moral Instinct."

An act done by instinct differs from every other kind of act in that an understanding of its object does not precede it but follows upon it. Instinct is therefore a rule of action given à priori. We may be unaware of the object to which it is directed, as no understanding of it is necessary to its attainment. On the other hand, if an act is done by an exercise of reason or intelligence, it proceeds according to a rule which the understanding has itself devised for the purpose of carrying out a preconceived aim. Hence it is that action according to rule may miss its aim, while instinct is infallible.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Moral Instinct."

Since it has already been settled that ’doing a wrong’ must be intentional, ’being wronged’ must consist in having an injury done to you by some one who intends to do it. In order to be wronged, a man must (1) suffer actual harm, (2) suffer it against his will. The various possible forms of harm are clearly explained by our previous, separate discussion of goods and evils. We have also seen that a voluntary action is one where the doer knows what he is doing. We now see that every accusation must be of an action affecting either the community or some individual. The doer of the action must either understand and intend the action, or not understand and intend it. In the former case, he must be acting either from deliberate choice or from passion.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 1, ch 13, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite. It is superfluous further to distinguish actions according to the doers’ ages, moral states, or the like; it is of course true that, for instance, young men do have hot tempers and strong appetites; still, it is not through youth that they act accordingly, but through anger or appetite. Nor, again, is action due to wealth or poverty; it is of course true that poor men, being short of money, do have an appetite for it, and that rich men, being able to command needless pleasures, do have an appetite for such pleasures: but here, again, their actions will be due not to wealth or poverty but to appetite.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 1, ch 10, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

Affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgment have...

• Delphi Complete Works of Aphra Behn (Illustrated): (2016 edition), Delphi Classics - ISBN: 9781786560179

The weakest man is the one who is able to correct his moral defects, but doesn’t take action.

• Husayn al-Nuri al-Tabarsi, Mustadrak al-Wasā’il, vol. 11, p. 324

The ancient poets are like so many modern ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance.

• Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1.

The whole structure of that work [the Iliad] is dramatic and full of action.

• Alexander Pope, S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some, swell'd to gods, confess ev'n virtue vain;

• Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man/Chapter 6."

A Fool, with more of Wit than half mankind,
Too rash for Thought, for Action too refin'd:
A Tyrant to the Wife his Heart approves;
A Rebel to the very King he loves;
He dies, sad out-cast of each Church and State!

• Alexander Pope, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Lord Viscount Cobham."

But sage Historians! 'tis your task to prove
One action Conduct, one Heroic Love.
'Tis from high Life, high Characters are drawn;
A Saint in Crape is twice a Saint in Lawn;
A Judge is just, a Chanc'lor juster still;
A Gownman learn'd; a Bishop, what you will:
Wise, if a Minister; but if a King,
More wise, more learn'd, more just, more ev'ry thing.

• Alexander Pope, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Lord Viscount Cobham."

On human Actions reason tho' you can,
It may be Reason, but it is not Man:
His Principle of Action once explore,
That instant 'tis his Principle no more;
Like following Life thro' Creatures you dissect,
You lose it, in the moment you detect.

• Alexander Pope, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Lord Viscount Cobham."

Microtoxus: I would like to hear something clearer and, if I may say so, more explicit, if you are going to talk about these things. I admit my comprehension is rather slow. Really all generalizations, or, to use the philosophical term, “universals,” do completely and wholly contain the particular truth spoken of, but just the same such conceptions are not easy for everybody to grasp. These general statements are not fitted for practical application, since action must deal with particular things in particular situations. From you, therefore, I long to hear what liberty is and how we have moved away from it in the way we live, as well as how the way our friend, Eleutherius, lives is particularly free.

• Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogue on Liberty, bk 1, 1479.

Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel?

• Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the Cooper Institute, New York, New York (27 February 1860)

Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows--and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude--such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers?

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil/Chapter II."

The habitual play of our energy, or a slight encouragement on the part of a person whom we honour, fear, or love; or love of case, which prefers to do that which is nearest at hand; or some excitement of the imagination, caused at the decisive moment by some trivial occurrence; or physical influence, springing up quite unexpectedly; or caprice; or the outburst of some passion which, quite by accident, is ready to burst forth; in short, motives of which some are not known to us at all, some but very little, and which we can never counterbalance in advance, are the instigators. Probably even among them a contest takes place, a driving to and fro, a weighing up and down of parts—and this would be the real "contest of motives"—something quite invisible and unknown to us. I have calculated the results and successes, and in so doing placed a very essential motive into the battle-line of the motives, but I run as far from drawing up this battle-line as I am from seeing it ; the battle itself is hidden from me, and so is the victory as victory; for I certainly learn to know that which I eventually shall do, but I do not come to know which motive thereby has proved victorious. Yet we are certainly wont not to take all these unknown occurrences into account, and to imagine the preparatory stage of an action only in so far as it is conscious, and so we mistake the contest of the motives for the comparison of the possible results of divers actions a mistake of most important consequences, and most fatal to the development of morality.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 2."

The visible action is not the self-manifestation of the inward life, but only a weak and crude attempt of a single thread to make a show of representing the whole. And thus the German is not to be judged on any one action, for the individual may be as completely obscure after it as before. He must obviously be measured by his thoughts and feelings, which are now expressed in his books; if only the books did not, more than ever, raise the doubt whether the famous inward life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine. It might one day vanish and leave behind it only the external life,—with its vulgar pride and vain servility,—to mark the German. Fearful thought!—as fearful as if the inward life still sat there, painted and rouged and disguised, become a play-actress or something worse; as his theatrical experience seems to have taught the quiet observer Grillparzer, standing aside as he did from the main press. "We feel by theory," he says. "We hardly know any more how our contemporaries give expression to their feelings: we make them use gestures that are impossible nowadays. Shakespeare has spoilt us moderns."

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life."

Admiration

To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.

• Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840) - The Hero as Prophet.

Of unwise admiration much may be hoped, for much good is really in it; but unwise contempt is itself a negation; nothing comes of it, for it is nothing.

• Thomas Carlyle.

Nothing so lifts a man from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.

• Thomas Carlyle, Past And Present — CHAPTER III..

No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man.

• Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840) - The Hero as Divinity.

Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration.

• Thomas De Quincey.

The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party line like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (ed. 1911).

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (ed. Random House LLC, 2000).

There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil/Chapter IV."

Admirers.—He who goes so far in his admiration as to crucify the non-admirer, is one of the hangmen of his party; beware of shaking hands with him, though he be of your party.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 4."

And it is worthy of remark in Solomon, that while he flourished in the possession of his empire, in wealth, in the magnificence of his works, in his court, his household, his fleet, the splendor of his name, and the most unbounded admiration of mankind, he still placed his glory in none of these, but declared that it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of a king to search it out.
Again, let any one but consider the immense difference between men’s lives in the most polished countries of Europe, and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies, he will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man, not only on account of mutual aid and benefits, but from their comparative states—the result of the arts, and not of the soil or climate.
Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world: first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.

The admiration of mankind with regard to the arts and sciences, which is of itself sufficiently simple and almost puerile, has been increased by the craft and artifices of those who have treated the sciences, and delivered them down to posterity. For they propose and produce them to our view so fashioned, and as it were masked, as to make them pass for perfect and complete. For if you consider their method and divisions, they appear to embrace and comprise everything which can relate to the subject. And although this frame be badly filled up and resemble an empty bladder, yet it presents to the vulgar understanding the form and appearance of a perfect science.
The first and most ancient investigators of truth were wont, on the contrary, with more honesty and success, to throw all the knowledge they wished to gather from contemplation, and to lay up for use, into aphorisms, or short scattered sentences unconnected by any method, and without pretending or professing to comprehend any entire art. But according to the present system, we cannot wonder that men seek nothing beyond that which is handed down to them as perfect, and already extended to its full complement.

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.

Researches into the springs of natural bodies and their motions should awaken us to admiration at the wondrous wisdom of our Creator in all the works of nature.

• Dr. Isaac Watts, "wondrous, adj." A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson. 1773.

On her did I behold so great a gladness
Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds
Created through that altitude to fly,
That whatsoever I had seen before
Did not suspend me in such admiration,
Nor show me such similitude of God.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 3/Canto 32."

I turned me round, with admiration filled,
To good Virgilius, and he answered me
With visage no less full of wonderment.

• Dante Alighieri, "Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867)/Volume 2/Canto 29."

Yen Yuan, in admiration of the Master's doctrines, sighed and said, "I looked up to them, and they seemed to become more high; I tried to penetrate them, and they seemed to become more firm; I looked at them before me, and suddenly they seemed to be behind. The Master, by orderly method, skillfully leads men on. He enlarged my mind with learning, and taught me the restraints of propriety. When I wish to give over the study of his doctrines, I cannot do so, and having exerted all my ability, there seems something to stand right up before me; but though I wish to follow and lay hold of it, I really find no way to do so."

• “The Internet Classics Archive | the Analects by Confucius.” Section 2 Part 9.

Where there is no conscious apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the first sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

• William Hazlitt, ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING.

His admiration oscillates between the most worthless of rebels and the most worthless of oppressors, between Marten, the disgrace of the High Court of justice, and Laud, the disgrace of the Star-Chamber. He can forgive anything but temperance and impartiality. He has a certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as with that of his associates. In every furious partisan he sees either his present self or his former self, the pensioner that is, or the Jacobin that has been. But he is unable to comprehend a writer who, steadily attached to principles, is indifferent about names and badges, and who judges of characters with equable severity, not altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

• Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays - Volume 1, HALLAM.

I prefer, before heaven, to go astray with Plato, your reverence for whom I know, and admiration for whom I learn from your lips, rather than hold true views with his opponents.

• Cicero, Translated by J.E. King, Cicero in Twenty Eight Volumes (XVIII).

We still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of successive ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction.

• Charles Dickens, The Centenary edition of the works of Charles Dickens (ed. 1911).

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.

• Charles Darwin, chapter II: "Rio de Janeiro, etc.", entry for 18 April 1832, page 29 - The Voyage of the Beagle (1839).

Lord Bacon has compared those who move in higher spheres to those heavenly bodies in the firmament, which have much admiration, but little rest. And it is not necessary to invest a wise man with power to convince him that it is a garment bedizened with gold, which dazzles the beholder by its splendor, but oppresses the wearer by its weight.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways.

• Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious (ed. Courier Corporation, 2003).

Sparta aroused among the other Greeks an admiration which is to us somewhat surprising. Originally, it had been much less different from other Greek cities than it became later; in early days it produced poets and artists as good as those elsewhere. But about the seventh century B.C., or perhaps even later, its constitution (falsely attributed to Lycurgus) crystallized into the form we have been considering; everything else was sacrificed to success in war, and Sparta ceased to have any part whatever in what Greece contributed to the civilization of the world. To us, the Spartan state appears as a model, in miniature, of the state that the Nazis would establish if victorious.

• Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster, 2007. Book 1, Ch. 12, pg. 97-98.

I answered that the greatest reward I could desire for my labour was to have satisfied her ladyship. Then, smiling in my turn, and bowing to her, I took my leave, saying I wanted no reward but that. She turned to the Roman lady and said: “You see that the qualities we discerned in him are companied by virtues, and not vices.” They both expressed their admiration, and then Madonna Porzia continued: “Friend Benvenuto, have you never heard it said that when the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs?” I replied: “Quite true! and yet, in the midst of all his troubles, I should like this time to see him laugh;” and as I took my leave, she said that this time she had no will to bestow on him that favour.

• Benvenuto Cellini, “The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.” Ch. XX.

Good Sense and Learning may Esteem obtain,
Humour and Wit a Laugh, if rightly ta’en;
Fair Virtue Admiration may impart;
But ’tis Good-Nature only wins the Heart:
It molds the Body to an easy Grace,
And brightens every Feature of the Face;
It smooths th’unpolish’d Tongue with Eloquence,
And adds Persuasion to the finest Sense.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1757,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0030.

Admiration is the Daughter of Ignorance.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard, 1736,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0019.

The affections are the children of ignorance; when the horizon of our experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly vanish.

• Benjamin Disraeli, Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales by the Right Honorable B. Disraeli: Coningsby (ed. 1879).

The Goodwill of People. ’Tis much to gain universal admiration; more, universal love. Something depends on natural disposition, more on practice: the first founds, the second then builds on that foundation. Brilliant parts suffice not, though they are presupposed; win good opinion and ’tis easy to win goodwill. Kindly acts besides are required to produce kindly feelings, doing good with both hands, good words and better deeds, loving so as to be loved. Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages. First lay hand on deeds and then on pens; words follow swords; for there is goodwill to be won among writers, and it is eternal.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

iii Keep Matters for a Time in Suspense. Admiration at their novelty heightens the value of your achievements, It is both useless and insipid to play with the cards on the table. If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention. Mix a little mystery with everything, and the very mystery arouses veneration. And when you explain, be not too explicit, just as you do not expose your inmost thoughts in ordinary intercourse. Cautious silence is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom. A resolution declared is never highly thought of; it only leaves room for criticism. And if it happens to fail, you are doubly unfortunate. Besides you imitate the Divine way when you cause men to wonder and watch.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

• Arthur Schopenhauer.

She, however, attentively watched my looks, and her artist's pride was gratified, no doubt, to read my heartfelt admiration in my eyes.

• Anne Brontë, Gilbert Markham (Ch. VIII : The Present) - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

And towards those who do not try to thwart us when we are angry or in earnest, which would mean being ready to fight us. And towards those who have some serious feeling towards us, such as admiration for us, or belief in our goodness, or pleasure in our company; especially if they feel like this about qualities in us for which we especially wish to be admired, esteemed, or liked. And towards those who are like ourselves in character and occupation, provided they do not get in our way or gain their living from the same source as we do-for then it will be a case of 'potter against potter':
"Potter to potter and builder to builder begrudge their reward. "

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 2, ch 4, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

And before those who have never yet known us come to grief, since their attitude to us has amounted to admiration so far: that is why we feel ashamed to refuse those a favour who ask one for the first time-we have not as yet lost credit with them. Such are those who are just beginning to wish to be our friends; for they have seen our best side only (hence the appropriateness of Euripides' reply to the Syracusans): and such also are those among our old acquaintances who know nothing to our discredit. And we are ashamed not merely of the actual shameful conduct mentioned, but also of the evidences of it: not merely, for example, of actual sexual intercourse, but also of its evidences; and not merely of disgraceful acts but also of disgraceful talk. Similarly we feel shame not merely in presence of the persons mentioned but also of those who will tell them what we have done, such as their servants or friends.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 2, ch 6, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

The conditions under which we shall feel shame are these: first, having people related to us like those before whom, as has been said, we feel shame. These are, as was stated, persons whom we admire, or who admire us, or by whom we wish to be admired, or from whom we desire some service that we shall not obtain if we forfeit their good opinion. These persons may be actually looking on (as Cydias represented them in his speech on land assignments in Samos, when he told the Athenians to imagine the Greeks to be standing all around them, actually seeing the way they voted and not merely going to hear about it afterwards): or again they may be near at hand, or may be likely to find out about what we do. This is why in misfortune we do not wish to be seen by those who once wished themselves like us; for such a feeling implies admiration. And men feel shame when they have acts or exploits to their credit on which they are bringing dishonour, whether these are their own, or those of their ancestors, or those of other persons with whom they have some close connexion.

• Aristotle, Rhetoric, bk 2, ch 6, Translated by W. Rhys Roberts.

Advancement

Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2.

And further the said Sr. Walter Ralegh as well for and in especial regard and zeal of planting the Christian religion in and among the said barbarous and heathen countries and for the advancement and preferment of the same and the common utility and profit of the inhabitants therein as also for the encouragement of the said adventurers and other assistants in Virginia does freely and liberally give them the sum of one hundred pounds.’

• Thomas Jefferson, “Refutation of the Argument that the Colonies were Established at the Expense of the British Nation, [after 19 January 1776],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0147.

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.

• Thomas Carlyle, Sartor resartus. Lectures on heroes, hero-worship (ed. 1886).

However the account of the Pensill or hanging gardens of Babylon, if made by Semiramis, the third or fourth from Nimrod, is of no slender antiquity; which being not framed upon ordinary levell of ground, but raised upon pillars, admitting under-passages, we cannot accept as the first Babylonian Gardens; But a more eminent progress and advancement in that art, then any that went before it: Somewhat answering or hinting the old Opinion concerning Paradise it self, with many conceptions elevated, above the plane of the Earth.

• Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus: Chapter I.”

And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and, beside the Apostate Christian, some Heathens have questioned his Philosophical part, or treaty of the Creation: Yet is there surely no reasonable Pagan, that will not admire the rational and well grounded precepts of Christ; whose life, as it was conformable unto his Doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of Reason; and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it.

• Thomas Browne, “Vulgar Errors I.iii: Erroneous Disposition of People.”

I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of minds sent out upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and, though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriages taught others the way to success.
But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent, ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites, and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.
No man can imagine the course of his own life, or the conduct of the world around him, unworthy his attention; yet, among the sons of learning, many seem to have thought of every thing rather than of themselves, and to have observed every thing but what passes before their eyes: many who toil through the intricacy of complicated systems, are insuperably embarrassed with the least perplexity in common affairs; many who compare the actions, and ascertain the characters of ancient heroes, let their own days glide away without examination, and suffer vicious habits to encroach upon their minds without resistance or detection.

• “No. 180. The Study of Life Not to Be Neglected for the Sake of Books.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-180-the-study-of-life-not-to-be-neglected-for-the-sake-of-books/.

The truth is, that very few have leisure from indispensable business, to employ their thoughts upon narrative or characters; and among those to whom fortune has given the liberty of living more by their own choice, many create to themselves engagements, by the indulgence of some petty ambition, the admission of some insatiable desire, or the toleration of some predominant passion. The man whose whole wish is to accumulate money, has no other care than to collect interest, to estimate securities, and to engage for mortgages: the lover disdains to turn his ear to any other name than that of Corinna; and the courtier thinks the hour lost which is not spent in promoting his interest, and facilitating his advancement. The adventures of valour, and the discoveries of science, will find a cold reception, when they are obtruded upon an attention thus busy with its favourite amusement, and impatient of interruption or disturbance.

• “No. 118. The Narrowness of Fame.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-118-the-narrowness-of-fame/.

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front in publick life, or accustomed his passions to the vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert before hardy contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a silk-worm’s thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar mountains.

• “No. 117. The Advantages of Living in a Garret.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-117-the-advantages-of-living-in-a-garret/.

There is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications. Other vices or follies are restrained by fear, reformed by admonition, or rejected by the conviction which the comparison of our conduct with that of others may in time produce. But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being, is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach. The dreamer retires to his apartments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; new worlds rise up before him, one image is followed by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity, though not with the knowledge of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advancement of some favourite science. The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers, without any external symptoms of malignity.

• “No. 89. The Luxury of Vain Imagination.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/luxury-vain-imagination/.

The friend whom I have lost was a man eminent for genius, and, like others of the same class, sufficiently pleased with acceptance and applause. Being caressed by those who have preferments and riches in their disposal, he considered himself as in the direct road of advancement, and had caught the flame of ambition by approaches to its object. But in the midst of his hopes, his projects, and his gaieties, he was seized by a lingering disease, which, from its first stage, he knew to be incurable. Here was an end of all his visions of greatness and happiness; from the first hour that his health declined, all his former pleasures grew tasteless. His friends expected to please him by those accounts of the growth of his reputation, which were formerly certain of being well received; but they soon found how little he was now affected by compliments, and how vainly they attempted, by flattery, to exhilarate the languor of weakness, and relieve the solicitude of approaching death.

• “No. 54. A Death-Bed the True School of Wisdom.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/death-school-wisdom/.

This contraction of my income gave me no disturbance; for a genius like mine was out of the reach of want. I had friends that would be proud to open their purses at my call, and prospects of such advancement as would soon reconcile my uncle, whom, upon mature deliberation, I resolved to receive into favour without insisting on any acknowledgment of his offence, when the splendour of my condition should induce him to wish for my countenance. I therefore went up to London, before I had shewn the alteration of my condition by any abatement of my way of living, and was received by all my academical acquaintance with triumph and congratulation. I was immediately introduced among the wits and men of spirit; and in a short time had divested myself of all my scholar’s gravity, and obtained the reputation of a pretty fellow.

• “No. 26. The Mischief of Extravagance, and Misery of Dependence.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-26-the-mischief-of-extravagance-and-misery-of-dependence/.

When a man employs himself upon remote and unnecessary subjects, and wastes his life upon questions which cannot be resolved, and of which the solution would conduce very little to the advancement of happiness; when he lavishes his hours in calculating the weight of the terraqueous globe, or in adjusting successive systems of worlds beyond the reach of the telescope; he may be very properly recalled from his excursions by this precept, and reminded, that there is a nearer being with which it is his duty to be more acquainted; and from which his attention has hitherto been withheld by studies to which he has no other motive than vanity or curiosity.
The great praise of Socrates is, that he drew the wits of Greece, by his instruction and example, from the vain pursuit of natural philosophy to moral inquiries, and turned their thoughts from stars and tides, and matter and motion, upon the various modes of virtue, and relations of life. All his lectures were but commentaries upon this saying; if we suppose the knowledge of ourselves recommended by Chilo, in opposition to other inquiries less suitable to the state of man.

• “No. 24. The Necessity of Attending to the Duties of Common Life. The Natural Character Not to Be Forsaken.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-24-the-necessity-of-attending-to-the-duties-of-common-life-the-natural-character-not-to-be-forsaken/.

He would never allow himself to employ those exaggerations and colours in the narration of facts which many who would shudder at a deliberate falsehood freely indulge; some for the gratification of their passions or the advancement of their interests, and others purely from the impulse of vanity and a wish to render their narratives more striking and their conversation more poignant.

• Robert Hall (minister).

Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our cotemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years?
In the light of this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but the nature of our association, seem to prescribe to this day,—the American Scholar. Year by year, we come up hither to read one more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what new lights, new events and more days have thrown on his character, his duties, and his hopes.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar."

I incite my courage to patience, but I rein it as much as I can towards desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and allow my wishes as much liberty and indiscretion; but yet it never befell me to wish for either empire or royalty, or the eminency of those high and commanding fortunes: I do not aim that way; I love myself too well. When I think to grow greater, 'tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and timorous advancement, such as is proper for me in resolution, in prudence, in health, in beauty, and even in riches too; but this supreme reputation, this mighty authority, oppress my imagination; and, quite contrary to that other,—[Julius Caesar.]—I should, peradventure, rather choose to be the second or third in Perigord than the first at Paris at least, without lying, rather the third at Paris than the first.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book III Chapter VII. Of the Inconvenience of Greatness.

But all these good inclinations were stifled and spoiled by his furious ambition, by which he suffered himself to be so transported and misled that one may easily maintain that this passion was the rudder of all his actions; of a liberal man, it made him a public thief to supply this bounty and profusion, and made him utter this vile and unjust saying, "That if the most wicked and profligate persons in the world had been faithful in serving him towards his advancement, he would cherish and prefer them to the utmost of his power, as much as the best of men." It intoxicated him with so excessive a vanity, as to dare to boast in the presence of his fellow-citizens, that he had made the great commonwealth of Rome a name without form and without body; and to say that his answers for the future should stand for laws; and also to receive the body of the Senate coming to him, sitting; to suffer himself to be adored, and to have divine honours paid to him in his own presence. To conclude, this sole vice, in my opinion, spoiled in him the most rich and beautiful nature that ever was, and has rendered his name abominable to all good men, in that he would erect his glory upon the ruins of his country and the subversion of the greatest and most flourishing republic the world shall ever see.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II Chapter XXXIII. The story of Spurina.

But I return to Caesar. His pleasures never made him steal one minute of an hour, nor go one step aside from occasions that might any way conduce to his advancement. This passion was so sovereign in him over all the rest, and with so absolute authority possessed his soul, that it guided him at pleasure. In truth, this troubles me, when, as to everything else, I consider the greatness of this man, and the wonderful parts wherewith he was endued; learned to that degree in all sorts of knowledge that there is hardly any one science of which he has not written; so great an orator that many have preferred his eloquence to that of Cicero, and he, I conceive, did not think himself inferior to him in that particular, for his two anti-Catos were written to counterbalance the elocution that Cicero had expended in his Cato. As to the rest, was ever soul so vigilant, so active, and so patient of labour as his? and, doubtless, it was embellished with many rare seeds of virtue, lively, natural, and not put on; he was singularly sober; so far from being delicate in his diet, that Oppius relates, how that having one day at table set before him medicated instead of common oil in some sauce, he ate heartily of it, that he might not put his entertainer out of countenance. Another time he caused his baker to be whipped for serving him with a finer than ordinary sort of bread. Cato himself was wont to say of him, that he was the first sober man who ever made it his business to ruin his country.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II Chapter XXXIII. The story of Spurina.

For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into the share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in the intelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not to lessen and contract our own expenses to make the more room for theirs, seeing we beget them to that effect. 'Tis unjust that an old fellow, broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the money that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of many children, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their' best years for want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the knowledge of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and to seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for their own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of it.

• The Essays of Montaigne. 1877. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II Chapter VIII. Of the affection of fathers to their children.

The great advantages he sought made him despise the small ones within his reach and he obtained neither. The haughty disposition that he vainly tried to conceal, deprived him of the assistance of men in office, so that the elevation of his soul, his mind and his merit were harmful to his advancement and his aims. Had he expected less of his resources, he would have better proportioned his hopes and his actions to his circumstances; mature and moderate minds do not force their future, they proportion their enterprises to their circumstances, they await their fortune from events, and sometimes win it without trouble. But it is one of the illusions of youth to believe that everything can be done by our own strength and intelligence, and to desire to rise by our own industry, or by paths that merit alone cannot open to men without fortune. Pherecides was reduced to regret the very advantages he had despised. The people he wished to excel found themselves naturally above him, and no one pitied his misfortunes or deigned to discover their cause.

• Marquis de Vauvenargues, Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims. 1903.

TWo things there be which have bin ever found working much mischief to the church of God, and the advancement of truth; force on the one side restraining, and hire on the other side corrupting the teachers thereof. Few ages have bin since the ascension of our Saviour, wherin the one of these two, or both together have not prevaild. It can be at no time therfore unseasonable to speak of these things; since by them the church is either in continual detriment and oppression, or in continual danger. The former shall be at this time my argument; the latter as I shall finde God disposing me, and opportunity inviting. What I argue, shall be drawn from the scripture only; and therin from true fundamental principles of the gospel; to all knowing Christians undeniable. And if the governors of this commonwealth since the rooting out of prelats, have made least use of force in religion, and most have favord Christian liberty of any in this Iland before them since the first preaching of the gospel, for which we are not to forget our thanks to God, and their due praise; they may, I doubt not, in this treatise finde that which not only will confirm them to defend still the Christian liberty which we enjoy, but will incite them also to enlarge it, if in aught they yet straiten it. To them who perhaps herafter, less experienc'd in religion, may come to govern or give us laws, this or other such, if they please, may be a timely instruction: however, to the truth it will be at all times no unneedfull testimonie; at least some discharge of that general dutie which no Christian but according to what he hath receivd knows is requir'd of him if he have aught more conducing to the advancement of religion then what is usually endeavourd, freely to impart it.

• John Milton, “A Treatise of Civil Power: Text.”

But because about the manner and order of this government, whether it ought to be Presbyteriall, or Prelaticall, such endlesse question, or rather uproare is arisen in this land, as may be justly term'd, what the feaver is to the Physitians, the eternall reproach of our Divines; whilest other profound Clerks of late greatly, as they conceive, to the advancement of Prelaty, are so earnestly meting out the Lydian proconsular Asia, to make good the prime metropolis of Ephesus, as if some of our Prelates in all haste meant to change their soile, and become neighbours to the English Bishop of Chalcedon; and whilest good Breerwood as busily bestirres himselfe in our vulgar tongue to divide precisely the three Patriarchats, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, and whether to any of these England doth belong, I shall in the meane while not cease to hope through the mercy and grace of Christ, the head and husband of his Church, that England shortly is to belong, neither to See Patriarchall, nor See Prelaticall, but to the faithfull feeding and disciplining of that ministeriall order, which the blessed Apostles constituted throughout the Churches: and this I shall assay to prove can be no other, then that of Presbyters and Deacons.

• John Milton, “The Reason of Church Government: Book 1.” Preface.

Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections.

Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.

• Humphry Davy, Elements of Chemical Philosophy (1812), in J. Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (1839–40), Vol. 4

I will say a few words of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery or for the advancement of the science. Amongst them patience, industry, and neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing and registering the phenomena which occur, are essential. A steady hand and a quick eye are most useful auxiliaries.

• Humphry Davy, Consolations in Travel: Or, The Last Days of a Philosopher, Dialogue the Fifth (p. 174), Cassell & Co., Ltd. 1889.

Then came Socrates, who introduced dialectic, which resolves doubtful questions by induction from what is more certain. Even before Socrates, medicine had used induction from observations. And it had produced Hippocrates, the prince of physicians both for his achievements and for his antiquity, who earned the immortal eulogy ‘He neither deceives anyone, nor is deceived by anyone’, Nec fallit quenquam, nec falsus ab ullo est. In Plato’s day, as we learn from the Timaeus, the mathematics of the Italian school of Pythagoras had reached great heights by employing the unitive or so-called synthetic method. By virtue of this unitive method, Athens in the age of Socrates and Plato shone forth in all the arts for which human genius is admired – poetry, eloquence, and history, as well as music, statuary, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Then came Aristotle, who taught the syllogism, a method for deducing particulars from universals, rather than by uniting particulars to obtain universals. And Zeno, who taught the sorites, or cumulative syllogism, which, like the method of our modern philosophers, teaches us subtlety rather than acumen. These were their greatest contributions to human advancement. Hence the great philosopher and statesman Bacon justly proposes, recommends, and demonstrates the inductive method in his Novum Organum; and still enjoys a following among the English with great advances in experimental science.

• Giambattista Vico, New Science. Penguin Classics, 2000, pg. 204-205.

Later, having learned from his teacher that Paulus Venetus was the most acute of all the summulists, he began also to study him, with a view to further advancement. But his mind, still too weak to stand that kind of Chrysippean logic, was almost lost on it, so that to his great sorrow he had to give it up. His despair made him desert his studies (so dangerous it is to put youths to the study of sciences that are beyond their age!) and he strayed from them for a year and a half. We shall not here feign what Rene Descartes craftily feigned as to the method of his studies simply in order to exalt his own philosophy and mathematics and degrade all the other studies included in divine and human erudition. Rather, with the candor proper to a historian, we shall narrate plainly and step by step the entire series of Vico's studies, in order that the proper and natural causes of his particular development as a man of letters may be known.

• The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Pg. 113.

"Truly the very intellectual force, industry, and labour, which philosophers and scientists expend in the pursuit of their glory, are in time the cause of its extinction or obscurÈment. For by their own great exertions they open out a path for the still further advancement of the science, which in time progresses so rapidly that their writings and names fall gradually into oblivion. And it is certainly difficult for most men to esteem others for a knowledge greatly inferior to their own. Who can doubt that the twentieth century will discover error in what the wisest of us regard as unquestionable truths, and will surpass us greatly in their knowledge of the truth?"

• Giacomo Leopardi, Essays and Dialogues.

Again, almost all the inventions which have been of greatest use or importance in the advancement of civilisation have originated rather fortuitously than rationally. Hence, human civilisation is a work of chance rather than nature, and where opportunity has been lacking, the people are still barbarians, though on the same level of age as civilised people.

• Giacomo Leopardi, Essays and Dialogues.

The tyrants of the intellect.—In our days the advancement of science is no longer thwarted by the casual fact that man attains an age of about seventy years, as was the case for too long a time. Formerly a man wanted to attain the sum total of knowledge during this short period, and according to this general desire people valued the methods of knowledge. The minor individual questions and experiments were considered contemptible; people wanted the shortest cut, believing that since everything in the world seemed adapted to man, even the acquirement of knowledge was regulated in conformity with the limits of human life. To solve everything with one blow, with one word—this was the secret wish. The task was pictured in the metaphor of the Gordian knot or the egg of Columbus ; no one doubted but that it was possible to reach the goal, even of knowledge, in the manner of Alexander or Columbus, and to satisfy all questions by one answer, “There is a mystery to be solved,” appeared to be the goal of life in the eyes of the philosopher; first of all the mystery had to be discovered and the problem of the world to be compressed into the simplest enigmatical form. The unbounded ambition and delight of being the “unraveller of the world” filled the dreams of the thinker, nothing seemed to him worth any trouble but the means of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 5."

Good Fortune almost always alters the Proceedings and the Air of a Man, and makes him quite another thing in all his Behaviour and Conversation. This is a great Weakness to trick and set ones self off with what is not our own. If Virtue were esteemed above all other things, no Favour, no Advancement would be able to change Men either in their Temper or their Countenance.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, 2nd ed. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1912; Bartleby.com, 2011.

Let none even doubt whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish the philosophy, arts, and sciences, which are now in use. On the contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and honor; for we by no means interfere to prevent the prevalent system from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or being employed serviceably in the chair of the professor or the practice of common life, and being taken, in short, by general consent as current coin. Nay, we plainly declare, that the system we offer will not be very suitable for such purposes, not being easily adapted to vulgar apprehensions, except by effects and works. To show our sincerity in professing our regard and friendly disposition toward the received sciences, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings (especially our books on the Advancement of Learning). We will not, therefore, endeavor to evince it any further by words; but content ourselves with steadily and professedly premising, that no great progress can be made by the present methods in the theory or contemplation of science, and that they cannot be made to produce any very abundant effects.

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.

And even should the odium I have alluded to be avoided, yet it is sufficient to repress the increase of science that such attempts and industry pass unrewarded; for the cultivation of science and its reward belong not to the same individual. The advancement of science is the work of a powerful genius, the prize and reward belong to the vulgar or to princes, who (with a few exceptions) are scarcely moderately well informed. Nay, such progress is not only deprived of the rewards and beneficence of individuals, but even of popular praise; for it is above the reach of the generality, and easily overwhelmed and extinguished by the winds of common opinions. It is not wonderful, therefore, that little success has attended that which has been little honored.
But by far the greatest obstacle to the advancement of the sciences, and the undertaking of any new attempt or department, is to be found in men’s despair and the idea of impossibility; for men of a prudent and exact turn of thought are altogether diffident in matters of this nature, considering the obscurity of nature, the shortness of life, the deception of the senses, and weakness of the judgment. They think, therefore, that in the revolutions of ages and of the world there are certain floods and ebbs of the sciences, and that they grow and flourish at one time, and wither and fall off at another, that when they have attained a certain degree and condition they can proceed no further.

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.

LXXXI. There is another powerful and great cause of the little advancement of the sciences, which is this; it is impossible to advance properly in the course when the goal is not properly fixed. But the real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches. The great crowd of teachers know nothing of this, but consist of dictatorial hirelings; unless it so happen that some artisan of an acute genius, and ambitious of fame, gives up his time to a new discovery, which is generally attended with a loss of property. The majority, so far from proposing to themselves the augmentation of the mass of arts and sciences, make no other use of an inquiry into the mass already before them, than is afforded by the conversion of it to some use in their lectures, or to gain, or to the acquirement of a name, and the like. But if one out of the multitude be found, who courts science from real zeal, and on his own account, even he will be seen rather to follow contemplation, and the variety of theories, than a severe and strict investigation of truth. Again, if there even be an unusually strict investigator of truth, yet will he propose to himself, as the test of truth, the satisfaction of his mind and understanding, as to the causes of things long since known, and not such a test as to lead to some new earnest of effects, and a new light in axioms. If, therefore, no one have laid down the real end of science, we cannot wonder that there should be error in points subordinate to that end.

• Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.

The former question being debated between Socrates and a sophist, Socrates placing felicity in an equal and constant peace of mind, and the sophist in much desiring and much enjoying, they fell from argument to ill words: the sophist saying that Socrates’ felicity was the felicity of a block or stone; and Socrates saying that the sophist’s felicity was the felicity of one that had the itch, who did nothing but itch and scratch. And both these opinions do not want their supports. For the opinion of Socrates is much upheld by the general consent even of the epicures themselves, that virtue beareth a great part in felicity; and if so, certain it is, that virtue hath more use in clearing perturbations then in compassing desires. The sophist’s opinion is much favoured by the assertion we last spake of, that good of advancement is greater than good of simple preservation; because every obtaining a desire hath a show of advancement, as motion though in a circle hath a show of progression.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

The works touching books are two - first, libraries, which are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed; secondly, new editions of authors, with more correct impressions, more faithful translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations, and the like.
The works pertaining to the persons of learned men (besides the advancement and countenancing of them in general) are two - the reward and designation of readers in sciences already extant and invented; and the reward and designation of writers and inquirers concerning any parts of learning not sufficiently laboured and prosecuted.
These are summarily the works and acts wherein the merits of many excellent princes and other worthy personages, have been conversant. As for any particular commemorations, I call to mind what Cicero said when he gave general thanks, Difficile non aliquem, ingratum quenquam præterire [It were hard to remember all, and yet ungracious to forget any]. Let us rather, according to the Scriptures, look unto that part of the race which is before us, than look back to that which is already attained.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

… the former concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof; the latter, what the particular acts and works are which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning...

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

That the perpetual flower of youth should be the present which mankind received as a reward for their accusation, carries this moral: that the ancients seem not to have despaired of discovering methods, and remedies, for retarding old age, and prolonging the period of human life, but rather reckoned it among those things which, through sloth and want of diligent inquiry, perish and come to nothing, after having been once undertaken, than among such as are absolutely impossible, or placed beyond the reach of the human power. For they signify and intimate from the true use of fire, and the just and strenuous accusation and conviction of the errors of art, that the divine bounty is not wanting to men in such kind of presents, but that men indeed are wanting to themselves, and lay such an inestimable gift upon the back of a slow-paced ass; that is, upon the back of the heavy, dull, lingering thing, experience; from whose sluggish and tortoise-pace proceeds that ancient complaint of the shortness of life, and the slow advancement of arts.

• Bacon, Lord. Pagan Mythology, Or, the Wisdom of the Ancients. London : Progressive Publishing Company, 1891, Chapter 26: Prometheus, pg. 66-67.

The same Plutarch said of men of weak abilities set in great place, "That they were like little statues set on great bases, made to appear the less by their advancement."

• Apophthegms New and Old, pg. 73. Apophthegm No. 2. Apopthegms published by Dr. Tenison in the Baconiana.

And it is a matter of common discourse of the chain of sciences, how they are linked together, insomuch as the Grecians, who had terms at will, have fitted it of a name of Circle-Learning. Nevertheless I that hold it for a great impediment towards the advancement and further invention of knowledge, that particular arts and sciences have been disincorporated from general knowledge, do not understand one and the same thing, which Cicero's discourse and the note and conceit of the Grecians in their word Circle-Learning do intend. For I mean not that use which one science hath of another for ornament or help in practice, as the orator hath of knowledge of affections for moving, or as military science may have use of geometry for fortifications; but I mean it directly of that use by way of supply of light and information, which the particulars and instances of one science do yield and present for the framing or correcting of the axioms of another science in their very truth and notion. And therefore that example of oculist and title lawyers doth come nearer my conceit than the other two; for sciences distinguished have a dependence upon universal knowledge to be augmented and rectified by the superior light thereof; as well as the parts and members of a science have upon the maxims of the same science, and the mutual light and consent which one part receiveth of another.

• "The Works of Francis Bacon/Volume 1/Miscellaneous Tracts II." Valerius Terminus, of the Interpretation of Nature. Of the impediments of knowledge, in handling it by parts, and in slipping off particular sciences from the root and stock of universal knowledge. Being the VIIIth chapter, the whole chapter.

Setting is preliminary to brighter rising; decay is a process of advancement; death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

• Edwin Hubbell Chapin, Select sermons preached in the Broadway Church (ed. 1859)

Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless — and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis — who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation — these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress — that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

• Edger Allen Poe, “The Power of Words.”

Your Committee is of opinion that nothing better could be devised by human wisdom than argued judgments publicly delivered for preserving unbroken the great traditionary body of the law, and for marking, whilst that great body remained unaltered, every variation in the application and the construction of particular parts, for pointing out the ground of each variation, and for enabling the learned of the bar and all intelligent laymen to distinguish those changes made for the advancement of a more solid, equitable, and substantial justice, a progressive experience, and the improvement of moral philosophy, from those hazardous changes in any of the ancient opinions and decisions which may arise from ignorance, from levity, from false refinement, from a spirit of innovation, or from other motives, of a nature not more justifiable.

• Edmund Burke, Imp. of W. Hastings: Report on the Lords’ Journals, 1794.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

• Denis Diderot, Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774).

There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her, and zealously to labour after her wages is to receive them. Those that seek her early will find her before it is late; her reward also is with her, and she will come quickly. For the breast of a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth; where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivalled influence, every subjugated passion “like the wind and storm fulfilling his word.”

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

It is, at least, this indifference not speculative theories, so just, so rational, so advantageous for states, that sound philosophy may propose to introduce, gradually, upon the earth. Would not the human race be much happier--if the sovereigns of the world, occupied with the welfare of their subjects, leaving to superstitious theologians their futile contests, making their various systems yield to healthy politics; obliged these haughty ministers to become citizens; carefully prevented their disputes from interrupting the public tranquillity? What advantage might there not result to science; what a start would be given to the progress of the human mind, to the cause of sound morality, to the advancement of equitable jurisprudence, to the improvement of legislation, to the diffusion of education, from an unlimited freedom of thought? At present, genius every where finds trammels; superstition invariably opposes itself to its course; man, straitened with bandages, scarcely enjoys the free use of any one of his faculties; his mind itself is cramped; it appears continually wrapped up in the swaddling clothes of infancy. The civil power, leagued with spiritual domination, appears only disposed to rule over brutalized slaves, shut up in a dark prison, where they reciprocally goad each other with the efferverscence of their mutual ill humour. Sovereigns, in general, detest liberty of thought, because they fear truth; this appears formidable to them, because it would condemn their excesses; these irregularities are dear to them, because they do not, better than their subjects, understand their true interests; properly considered, these ought to blend themselves into one uniform mass.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part II, Chapter 13.”

In other words, if envy is aroused only by wealth, rank, or power, it is often kept down by egoism, which perceives that, on occasion, assistance, enjoyment, support, protection, advancement, and so on, may be hoped for from the object of envy or that at least by intercourse with him a man may himself win honour from the reflected light of his superiority; and here, too, there is the hope of one day attaining all those advantages himself. On the other hand, in the envy that is directed to natural gifts and personal advantages, like beauty in women, or intelligence in men, there is no consolation or hope of one kind or the other; so that nothing remains but to indulge a bitter and irreconcilable hatred of the person who possesses these privileges; and hence the only remaining desire is to take vengeance on him.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Human Nature."

Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place of thought. It stands to thinking in the same relation in which eating stands to digestion and assimilation. When experience boasts that to its discoveries alone is due the advancement of the human race, it is as though the mouth were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the body in health.
The works of all truly capable minds are distinguished by a character of decision and definiteness, which means they are clear and free from obscurity. A truly capable mind always knows definitely and clearly what it is that it wants to express, whether its medium is prose, verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive and not definite; and by this they may be known for what they are.
The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order is that it always judges at first hand. Everything it advances is the result of thinking for itself; and this is everywhere evident by the way in which it gives its thoughts utterance. Such a mind is like a Prince. In the realm of intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the authority of minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Literature/On Thinking for Oneself."

Every discovery which multiplies the subsistence of men, must be a matter of joy to every friend to humanity. As such I learn with great satisfaction that you have found the means of preserving flour more perfectly than has been done hitherto. But I am not authorized to avail my country of it by making any offer for it’s communication. Their policy is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their products. Tho’ the interposition of government in matters of invention has it’s use, yet it is in practice so inseparable from abuse, that they think it better not to meddle with it. We are only to hope therefore that those governments who are in the habit of directing all the actions of their subjects by particular law, may be so far sensible of the duty they are under of cultivating useful discoveries, as to reward you amply for yours which is among the most interesting to humanity. I have the honour to be with great consideration and respect Sir your most obedient & most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson

• “From Thomas Jefferson to Jeudy de l’Hommande, 9 August 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0017.

Adversity

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry; But were we burdened with light weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain.

• William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors Act 2, Scene 1

Sweet are the uses of adversity
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

• William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II. Sc. i.

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.

• William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act iii. Sc. 3.

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity.

• William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors. Act ii. Sc. 1.

A man I am, cross’d with adversity.

• William Shakespeare, The Two Gentleman of Verona. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

• William Hazlitt, "On the Conversations of Lords," New Monthly Magazine (April 1826). - Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852).

At length Robert Barclay, a native of Scotland, presented to the king, in 1675, his “Apology for the Quakers”; a work as well drawn up as the subject could possibly admit. The dedication to Charles II, instead of being filled with mean, flattering encomiums, abounds with bold truths and the wisest counsels. “Thou hast tasted,” says he to the king, at the close of his “Epistle Dedicatory,” “of prosperity and adversity: thou hast been driven out of the country over which thou now reignest, and from the throne on which thou sittest: thou hast groaned beneath the yoke of oppression; therefore hast thou reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and man. If, after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord, with all thy heart; but forget Him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give thyself up to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy guilt, and bitter thy condemnation. Instead of listening to the flatterers about thee, hearken only to the voice that is within thee, which never flatters. I am thy faithful friend and servant, Robert Barclay.

• Voltaire, The History of the Quakers (1762)

Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required

• Thucydides, The Civil War at Corcyra: III 69-85

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

• Victor Hugo.

And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast, And been bow'd to the earth by its fury; To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury - Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime, The regrets of remembrance to cozen, And having obtained a New Trial of Time, Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.

• Thomas Hood, The New Monthly Magazine (ed. 1842).

What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.

• Thomas Gray, Hymn to Adversity, St. 2 (1742)

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!

• Thomas Gray, Hymn to Adversity, St. 1 (1742)

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

• Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters.

OWE not thy Humility unto humiliation from adversity, but look humbly down in that State when others look upwards upon thee. Think not thy own shadow longer than that of others, nor delight to take the Altitude of thy self. Be patient in the age of Pride, when Men live by short intervals of Reason under the dominion of Humor and Passion, when it’s in the Power of every one to transform thee out of thy self, and run thee into the short madness. If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not short of Socrates, and those patient Pagans who tired the tongues of their Enemies, while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen Walls and Statues.

• Thomas Browne, “Christian Morals, Part I.” SECT. XIV.

Then commenced the reflux of public opinion. The nation began to find out to what a man it had intrusted, without conditions, all its dearest interests, on what a man it had lavished all its fondest affection. On the ignoble nature of the restored exile adversity had exhausted all her discipline in vain. He had one immense advantage over most other princes. Though born in the purple, he was far better acquainted with the vicissitudes of life and the diversities of character than most of his subjects. He had known restraint, danger, penury, and dependence. He had often suffered from ingratitude, insolence, and treachery. He had received many signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment. He had seen, if ever man saw, both sides of human nature.

• Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Mackintosh’s ‘History of the Revolution in England’.

Do not try to find a place free from temptations and troubles. Rather, seek a peace that endures even when you are beset by various temptations and tried by much adversity.

• Thomas à Kempis.

The measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity - adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

• Thomas à Kempis.

Do not try to find a place free from temptations and troubles. Rather, seek a peace that endures even when you are beset by various temptations and tried by much adversity.

• Thomas à Kempis.

Hidden pride is a most pernicious vice, the more so since it is not recognized and does not recognize itself. On the outside, it may appear gentle, mild, and even humble. Yet inside, it burns away bitterly. The person who is subject to such pride becomes inordinately elated when he is successful but is disturbed and dejected in the face of adversity or failure.

• Thomas à Kempis, Humility and the Elevation of the Mind to God

Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man’s virtue is best revealed in time of adversity — adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.”

• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?

• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

It is the duty of all persons, when affairs are the most prosperous, then in especial to reflect within themselves in what way they are to endure adversity.

• Terence, Phormio. Act ii. Sc. 1, 11. (241.)

Multos qui conflictari adversis videantur, beatos; ac plerosque, quanquam magnas per opes, miserrimos—We may see many struggling against adversity who yet are happy; and more, although abounding in wealth, who are most wretched.

• Tacitus.

Many who seem to be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable.

• Tacitus.

Adversity is the true school of the mind.

• Talmud.

I had grown accustomed to my station here.
Enduring it as if lost in a dream.
But today, my eyes have been opened.
Today, I awake.
Too long have I suffered adversity.
Pain from the actions of those entrusted with protecting me.
Forging on, my past shall not define me, even as I stand afeard a resurgence of my true vulnerabilities.
The time has come at last to abandon this isle.
To depart, never to return.
Fare thee well, O home.
Wait for my return no longer.
Onward I must proceed with strength in each footfall
Evermore haunted with the memories of the man I used to be.
For my old home is now behind me.
Faith is my new home.

• Sophocles.

When men praise great incomes, he should praise the person who can be rich with a slender estate and measures his wealth by the use he makes of it. In the face of those who glorify influence and power, he should of his own volition recommend a leisure devoted to study, and a soul which has left the external and found itself. 73. He should point out persons, happy in the popular estimation, who totter on their envied heights of power, who are dismayed and hold a far different opinion of themselves from what others hold of them. That which others think elevated, is to them a sheer precipice. Hence they are frightened and in a flutter whenever they look down the abrupt steep of their greatness. For they reflect that there are various ways of falling and that the topmost point is the most slippery. 74. Then they fear that for which they strove, and the good fortune which made them weighty in the eyes of others weighs more heavily upon themselves. Then they praise easy leisure and independence; they hate the glamour and try to escape while their fortunes are still unimpaired. Then at last you may see them studying philosophy amid their fear, and hunting sound advice when their fortunes go awry. For these two things are, as it were, at opposite poles – good fortune and good sense; that is why we are wiser when in the midst of adversity. It is prosperity that takes away righteousness.

• Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 94.

No man of exalted gifts is pleased with that which is low and mean; the vision of great achievement summons him and uplifts him. 3. Just as the flame springs straight into the air and cannot be cabined or kept down any more than it can repose in quiet, so our soul is always in motion, and the more ardent it is, the greater its motion and activity. But happy is the man who has given it this impulse toward better things! He will place himself beyond the jurisdiction of chance; he will wisely control prosperity; he will lessen adversity, and will despise what others hold in admiration. 4. It is the quality of a great soul to scorn great things and to prefer that which is ordinary rather than that which is too great. For the one condition is useful and life-giving; but the other does harm just because it is excessive.

• Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 39.

Seneca has attempted, not only to pacify us in misfortune, but almost to allure us to it, by representing it as necessary to the pleasures of the mind. He that never was acquainted with adversity, says he, has seen the world but on one side, and is ignorant of half the scenes of nature. He invites his pupil to calamity, as the Syrens allured the passenger to their coasts, by promising that he shall return [πλείονα είδη (pleiona eidos)], with increase of knowledge, with enlarged views, and multiplied ideas.
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties. He who easily comprehends all that is before him, and soon exhausts any single subject, is always eager for new inquiries; and, in proportion as the intellectual eye takes in a wider prospect, it must be gratified with variety by more rapid flights, and bolder excursions; nor perhaps can there be proposed to those who have been accustomed to the pleasures of thought, a more powerful incitement to any undertaking, than the hope of filling their fancy with new images, of clearing their doubts, and enlightening their reason.

• “No. 150. Adversity Useful to the Acquisition of Knowledge.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1751, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-150-adversity-useful-to-the-acquisition-of-knowledge/.

Part of these benefits it is in every man’s power to procure to himself, by assigning proper portions of his life to the examination of the rest, and by putting himself frequently in such a situation, by retirement and abstraction, as may weaken the influence of external objects. By this practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy, its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility without its perturbations.
The necessity of setting the world at a distance from us, when we are to take a survey of ourselves, has sent many from high stations to the severities of a monastic life; and, indeed, every man deeply engaged in business, if all regard to another state be not extinguished, must have the conviction, though perhaps, not the resolution of Valdesso, who, when he solicited Charles the Fifth to dismiss him, being asked, whether he retired upon disgust, answered that he laid down his commission for no other reason but because there ought to be some time for sober reflection between the life of a soldier and his death.

• “No. 28. The Various Arts of Self-Delusion.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-28-the-various-arts-of-self-delusion/.

A grateful beast will stand upon record against those that in their prosperity forget their friends that to their loss and hazard stood by and succoured them in their adversity.

• Roger L'Estrange.

Nulla placere diu, neque vivere carmina possunt,
Quae scribuntur atquae potoribus.———
“No verses can please men or live long that are written by water-drinkers.” Poor men cannot please, their actions, counsels, consultations, projects, are vilified in the world's esteem, amittunt consilium in re, which Gnatho long since observed. Sapiens crepidas sibi nunquam nec soleas fecit, a wise man never cobbled shoes; as he said of old, but how doth he prove it? I am sure we find it otherwise in our days, pruinosis horret facundia pannis. Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did “go from door to door, and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him.” This common misery of theirs must needs distract, make them discontent and melancholy, as ordinarily they are, wayward, peevish, like a weary traveller, for Fames et mora bilem in nares conciunt, still murmuring and repining: Ob inopiam morosi sunt, quibus est male, as Plutarch quotes out of Euripides, and that comical poet well seconds,
Omnes quibus res sunt minus secundae, nescio quomodo
Suspitiosi, ad contumeliam omnia accipiunt magis,
Propter suam impotentiam se credunt negligi.
“If they be in adversity, they are more suspicious and apt to mistake: they think themselves scorned by reason of their misery:” and therefore many generous spirits in such cases withdraw themselves from all company, as that comedian Terence is said to have done; when he perceived himself to be forsaken and poor, he voluntarily banished himself to Stymphalus, a base town in Arcadia, and there miserably died.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

So many men, if any new honour, office, preferment, booty, treasure, possession, or patrimony, ex insperato fall unto them for immoderate joy, and continual meditation of it, cannot sleep or tell what they say or do, they are so ravished on a sudden; and with vain conceits transported, there is no rule with them. Epaminondas, therefore, the next day after his Leuctrian victory, “came abroad all squalid and submiss,” and gave no other reason to his friends of so doing, than that he perceived himself the day before, by reason of his good fortune, to be too insolent, overmuch joyed. That wise and virtuous lady, Queen Katherine, Dowager of England, in private talk, upon like occasion, said, that “she would not willingly endure the extremity of either fortune; but if it were so, that of necessity she must undergo the one, she would be in adversity, because comfort was never wanting in it, but still counsel and government were defective in the other:” they could not moderate themselves.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

A fair shoe, Hic soccus novus, elegans, as he said, sed nescis ubi urat, but thou knowest not where it pincheth. It is not another man's opinion can make me happy: but as Seneca well hath it, “He is a miserable wretch that doth not account himself happy, though he be sovereign lord of a world: he is not happy, if he think himself not to be so; for what availeth it what thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thyself dislike it?” A common humour it is of all men to think well of other men's fortunes, and dislike their own: Cui placet alterius, sua nimirum est odio sors; but qui fit Mecoenas, &c., how comes it to pass, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing, (saith Theodoret,) “neither with riches nor poverty, they complain when they are well and when they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity; they are troubled in a cheap year, in a barren, plenty or not plenty, nothing pleaseth them, war nor peace, with children, nor without.” This for the most part is the humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and show me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, &c., full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, duram servientes servitutem, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from a man. Our towns and cities are but so many dwellings of human misery. “In which grief and sorrow” (as he right well observes out of Solon) “innumerable troubles, labours of mortal men, and all manner of vices, are included, as in so many pens.” Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a globe or map. “Now light and merry,” but (as one follows it) “by-and-by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now patient, tomorrow crying out; now pale, then red; running, sitting, sweating, trembling, halting,” &c. Some few amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis, in the world's esteem, Gallinae filius albae, an happy and fortunate man, ad invidiam felix, because rich, fair, well allied, in honour and office; yet peradventure ask himself, and he will say, that of all others he is most miserable and unhappy.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

“In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable.” “In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity. What mediocrity may be found? Where is no temptation? What condition of life is free?” “Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory, envy; riches and cares, children and encumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary, go together: as if a man were therefore born” (as the Platonists hold) “to be punished in this life for some precedent sins.” Or that, as Pliny complains, “Nature may be rather accounted a stepmother, than a mother unto us, all things considered: no creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious; only man is plagued with envy, discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superstition.” Our whole life is an Irish sea, wherein there is nought to be expected but tempestuous storms and troublesome waves, and those infinite,
Tantum malorum pelagus aspicio,
Ut non sit inde enatandi copia,
no halcyonian times, wherein a man can hold himself secure, or agree with his present estate; but as Boethius infers, “there is something in every one of us which before trial we seek, and having tried abhor: we earnestly wish, and eagerly covet, and are eftsoons weary of it.” Thus between hope and fear, suspicions, angers, Inter spemque metumque, timores inter et iras, betwixt falling in, falling out, &c., we bangle away our best days, befool out our times, we lead a contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life; insomuch, that if we could foretell what was to come, and it put to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life.
“The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Nostrae salutis avidus, saith Lemnius, and for that cause pulls us by the ear many times, to put us in mind of our duties: “That they which erred might have understanding, (as Isaiah speaks xxix. 24) and so to be reformed.” “I am afflicted, and at the point of death,” so David confesseth of himself, Psal. lxxxviii. v. 15, v. 9. “Mine eyes are sorrowful through mine affliction:” and that made him turn unto God. Great Alexander in the midst of all his prosperity, by a company of parasites deified, and now made a god, when he saw one of his wounds bleed, remembered that he was but a man, and remitted of his pride. In morbo recolligit se animus, as Pliny well perceived; “In sickness the mind reflects upon itself, with judgment surveys itself, and abhors its former courses;” insomuch that he concludes to his friend Marius, “that it were the period of all philosophy, if we could so continue sound, or perform but a part of that which we promised to do, being sick. Whoso is wise then, will consider these things,” as David did (Psal. cxliv., verse last); and whatsoever fortune befall him, make use of it. If he be in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, seriously to recount with himself, why this or that malady, misery, this or that incurable disease is inflicted upon him; it may be for his good, sic expedit as Peter said of his daughter's ague. Bodily sickness is for his soul's health, periisset nisi periisset, had he not been visited, he had utterly perished; for “the Lord correcteth him whom he loveth, even as a father doth his child in whom he delighteth.”
“The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Cyrensis describes him, a sodomite, an atheist, (so convict by Anytus) iracundus et ebrius, dicax, &c. a pot-companion, by Plato's own confession, a sturdy drinker; and that of all others he was most sottish, a very madman in his actions and opinions. Pythagoras was part philosopher, part magician, or part witch. If you desire to hear more of Apollonius, a great wise man, sometime paralleled by Julian the apostate to Christ, I refer you to that learned tract of Eusebius against Hierocles, and for them all to Lucian's Piscator, Icaromenippus, Necyomantia: their actions, opinions in general were so prodigious, absurd, ridiculous, which they broached and maintained, their books and elaborate treatises were full of dotage, which Tully ad Atticum long since observed, delirant plerumque scriptores in libris suis, their lives being opposite to their words, they commended poverty to others, and were most covetous themselves, extolled love and peace, and yet persecuted one another with virulent hate and malice. They could give precepts for verse and prose, but not a man of them (as Seneca tells them home) could moderate his affections. Their music did show us flebiles modos, &c. how to rise and fall, but they could not so contain themselves as in adversity not to make a lamentable tone.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” THE DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER.

Sickness is a kind of adversity which is both a trial and a discipline; but much more of a discipline when short, and of a trial when very long. The kindness of friends during sickness is calculated, when it is newly called forth, to touch the heart, and call forth gratitude; but the confirmed invalid is in danger of becoming absorbed in self, and of taking all kinds of care and of sacrifice as a matter of course.

• Richard Whately.

Some kinds of adversity are chiefly of the character of TRIALS and others of DISCIPLINE. But Bacon does not advert to this difference, nor say anything at all about the distinction between discipline and trial; which are quite different in themselves, but often confounded together. By “discipline” is to be understood anything—whether of the character of adversity or not—that has a direct tendency to produce improvement, or to create some qualification that did not exist before; and by trial, anything that tends to ascertain what improvement has been made, or what qualities exist. Both effects may be produced at once; but what we speak of is, the proper character of trial, as such, and of discipline, as such.

• Richard Whately.

Concerning deliverance itself from all adversity we use not to say, “Men are in adversity,” whensoever they feel any small hindrance of their welfare in this world; but when some notable affliction or cross, some great calamity or trouble, befalleth them.

• Richard Hooker.

In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion's mouth, no men surpass them. On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;" and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the king passed it over. They are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily change their opinions to suit the hour. They are like ships with too much head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or even adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits/Truth.

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

• Pythagoras.

As those who sail in fair weather are wont to have things prepared against a storm, so also those who are wise in prosperity, should prepare things necessary for their assistance against adversity.

• “The Similitudes of Demophilus.” Sacred-Texts.com, 2024, sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp07.htm. Accessed 5 June 2024.

To find a friend in prosperity, is very easy; but in adversity, it is the most difficult of all things.

• “The Golden Sentences of Democrates.” Sacred-Texts.com, 2024, sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp05.htm.

Many turn from their friends, if, from affluence, they fall into adversity.

• “The Golden Sentences of Democrates.” Sacred-Texts.com, 2024, sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp05.htm.

Adversity shows whether we have friends, or only the shadows of friends.

• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.

Patience in adversity is by no means felicity.

• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.

Prosperity has no power over adversity.

• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.

He finds assistance in adversity who renders services in prosperity.

• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave.

Great souls are not cast down by adversity.

• Proverb.

Many can bear adversity, but few contempt.

• Proverb.

Vent au visage rend un homme sage—Wind in the face (i.e., adversity) makes a man wise.

• Proverb.

In prosperity caution, in adversity patience.

• Proverb.

Si l’adversité te trouve toujours sur tes pieds, la prospérité ne te fait pas aller plus vite—If adversity finds you always on foot, prosperity will not make you go faster.

• Proverb.

Adversity that weakens weak hearts engulfs strong souls.

• Proverb.

Tenacity and adversity are old foes.

• Chinese Proverb.

A stout heart tempers adversity.

• Dutch Proverb.

In prosperity think of adversity.

• Dutch Proverb.

Adversity tries friends. – निर्धनता में मित्रों की पहचान होती है |

• Proverb.

In the hour of adversity be not without hope For crystal rain falls from black clouds.

• Persian Proverbs

True friends are tested in adversity.

• Proverb.

The first to be summoned to Paradise on the Day of Resurrection will be those who praise God in prosperity and adversity.

• Prophet Muhammad, Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 730

How wonderful is the believer’s case, for there is good for him in everything, and this is exclusive only for believers. If something good happens to him, he is thankful and that is good for him, and if an adversity comes his way, he is patient, and that too is good for him.

• Prophet Muhammad.

A true Muslim is thankful to Allah in prosperity, and resigned to His will in adversity. (Muslim)

• Prophet Muhammad.

Get to know Allah in prosperity and He will know you in adversity. Know that what passed you by was not going to befall you and what has befallen you was not going to pass you by. And know that victory comes with patience, relief with affliction, and with hardship. (Agreed upon).

• Prophet Muhammad.

Indeed among the brutes it is not likely that there should be any envy, for they have no conception of prosperity or adversity, nor have they any idea of reputation or want of reputation, which are the things that mainly excite envy; but they hate one another, and are hostile to one another, and fight with one another to the death, as eagles and dragons, crows and owls, titmice and finches, insomuch that they say that even the blood of these creatures will not mix, and if you try to mix it it will immediately separate again. It is likely also that there is strong hatred between the cock and the lion, and the pig and the elephant, owing to fear. For what people fear they naturally hate. We see also from this that envy differs from hatred, for the animals are capable of the one, but not of the other.

• Plutarch, Morals, On Envy and Hatred.

I would like you to be a prince who is humble at home among his own people and in prosperity while being magnanimous facing his enemies in adversity. In neither case is such a prince acting timidly or proudly. Indeed, it seems to me that humility is in the first rank of all the virtues. However, some stupid and blind rulers do not feel that they can be truly great lords unless they are swaggering and prideful beyond human dimensions. This is really just the idiocy of ignorant princes. Caligula, that vilest of emperors, was not content with the honors due him as a man; he wished to be worshipped as a god. Consequently he placed statues of himself in the temples so that he who was certainly unworthy to be revered as a god, would be worshiped and venerated. He even established his own temple where priests sacrificed victims before his golden effigy. Caligula did many other things that he thought would bring him greater honor but that really only served to disclose his own stupidity. Is there anyone more evil, more monstrous than the emperor Commodus? Indeed, sacrifices were even made to this most evil son of an illustrious father, just as one would offer to a god. Statues in the form of Hercules were raised to Commodus, who certainly was not a god nor even really a man, but a cruel and ferocious beast. Even Heliogabalus himself, that vilest of princes and of men began to be worshipped. All of these emperors merited being murdered on the spot and having their bodies thrown into the Tiber or into sewers.

• Petrarch, How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State, 1373.

I suppose you mean that a man whose pleasures are uninterrupted comes to forget himself, and is never led back into virtue's path; but that he who amid his carnal delights is sometime visited with adversity will come to the recollection of his true condition just in proportion as he finds fickle and wayward Pleasure desert him.
If both kind of life had one and the same end, I do not see why he should not be counted the happier who enjoys the present time and puts off affliction to another day, rather than the man who neither enjoys the present nor looks for any joy hereafter; unless you are perhaps moved by this consideration that in the end the laughter of the former will be changed to more bitter tears?

• Petrarch’s Secret, or the Soul’s Conflict with Passion (Three Dialogues between Himself and St. Augustine). First Dialogue.

Let those Princes of ours, therefore, who, after holding them for a length of years, have lost their dominions, blame not Fortune but their own inertness. For never having reflected in tranquil times that there might come a change (and it is human nature when the sea is calm not to think of storms), when adversity overtook them, they thought not of defence but only of escape, hoping that their people, disgusted with the arrogance of the conqueror, would some day recall them.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, SDE Classics, 2019. Chapter XXIV, pg. 90.

If we look for the causes which first led to the overthrow of the Roman Empire, they will be found to have had their source in the employment of Gothic mercenaries, for from that hour the strength of the Romans began to wane and all the virtue which went from them passed to the Goths. And, to be brief, I say that without national arms no Princedom is safe, but on the contrary is wholly dependent on Fortune, being without the strength that could defend it in adversity. And it has always been the deliberate opinion of the wise, that nothing is so infirm and fleeting as a reputation for power not founded upon a national army, by which I mean one composed of subjects, citizens, and dependents, all others being mercenary or auxiliary.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, SDE Classics, 2019. Chapter XIII, pg. 52.

But, before all things, a Prince should so live with his subjects that no vicissitude of good or evil fortune shall oblige him to alter his behaviour; because, if a need to change come through adversity, it is then too late to resort to severity; while any leniency you may use will be thrown away, for it will be seen to be compulsory and gain you no thanks.

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, SDE Classics, 2019. Chapter VIII, pg. 34.

Adversa virtute repello—I repel adversity by valour.

• Mottos.

I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, The collected letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (ed. 2003).

Courage is the light of adversity.

• Marquis de Vauvenargues.

This sentiment is the asylum into which he retires, and to which the memory of his perfecutors cannot follow him: he unites himself in imagination with man restored to his rights, delivered from oppression, and proceeding with rapid strides in the path of happiness; he forgets his own misfortunes while his thoughts are thus employed; he lives no longer to adversity, calumny and malice, but becomes the associate of these wiser and more fortunate beings whose enviable condition he so earnestly contributed to produce.

• Marquis de Condorcet, Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind. M. Carey, 1795, p. 293. Note: Last paragraph of book.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

• Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. XXXIX

Prosperity Whose sources are interior. As soon Adversity A diamond overtake.

• Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (ed. 1915).

It was a saying of his that education was an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

• Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Bk 5, The Peripatetics, Aristotle.

Prosperity unmasks the vices; adversity reveals the virtues.

• Denis Diderot, A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1886).

Abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity.

• Daniel Defoe.

All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.

• Cicero.

The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortunes, his enemies by himself; and revenge is a much more punctual pay-master than gratitude.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation; and he that has never enjoyed the summit of prosperity is equally ignorant how far the iniquity of others can go. For our adversity will excite temptations in ourselves, or prosperity in others.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

I am convinced that adverse fortune is more beneficial to men than prosperous fortune. When Fortune seems kind, and seems to promise happiness, she lies. On the other hand, when she shows herself unstable and changeable, she is truthful. Good fortune deceives, adverse fortune teaches. Good fortune enslaves the minds of good men with the beauty of the specious goods which they enjoy; but bad fortune frees them by making them see the fragile nature of happiness. You will notice that good fortune is proud, insecure, ignorant of her true nature; but bad fortune is sober, self-possessed, and prudent through the experience of adversity. Finally, good fortune seduces weak men away from the true good through flattery; but misfortune often turns them around and forcibly leads them back to the true good.

• Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy.

HERE lies, etc.
Illustrious for his great knowledge which was recognized by the scholars of all Europe; more illustrious still for the great probity which he exercised in the offices and employments with which he was honored; but much more illustrious for his exemplary piety. He tasted good and bad fortune, that he might be known in every thing for what he was. He was seen temperate in prosperity and patient in adversity. He sought the aid of God in misfortune, and rendered him thanks in happiness. His heart was devoted to his God, his king, his family, and his friends. He had respect for the great and love for the small; it pleased God to crown all the graces of nature that he had bestowed on him with a divine grace which made his great love for God the foundation, the stay, and the consummation of all his other virtues.
Thou, who seest in this epitome the only thing that remains to us of so beautiful a life, admire the fragility of all present things, weep the loss that we have suffered; render thanks to God for having left for a time to earth the enjoyment of such a treasure; and pray his goodness to crown with his eternal glory him whom he crowned here below with more graces and virtues than the limits of an epitaph permit us to relate.
His grief-stricken children have placed this epitaph on this spot, which they have composed from the fulness of their hearts, in order to render homage to the truth and not to appear ingrates in the sight of God.

• Blaise Pascal, "Blaise Pascal/Epitaph of M. Pascal, Pere."

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.

• Ecclesiastes 7:14 KJV.

Prosperity discovers Vice, Adversity Virtue.

• “Poor Richard Improved, 1751,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0029.

Let it not be believed that the man of poverty himself is excluded from happiness: mediocrity and indigence frequently procure for him advantages that opulence and grandeur are obliged to acknowledge; which title and wealth are constrained to envy: the soul of the needy man, always in action, never ceases to form desires which his activity places within his reach; whilst the rich, the powerful, are frequently in the afflicting embarrassment, of either not knowing what to wish for, or else of desiring those objects which their listlessness renders it impossible for them to obtain. The poor man's body, habituated to labour, knows the sweets of repose; this repose of the body, is the most troublesome fatigue to him who is wearied with his idleness; exercise, and frugality, procure for the one vigour, health, and contentment; the intemperance and sloth of the other, furnish him only with disgust--load him with infirmities. Indigence sets all the springs of the soul to work; it is the mother of industry; from its bosom arises genius; it is the parent of talents, the hot-bed of that merit to which opulence is obliged to pay tribute; to which grandeur bows its homage. In short the blows of fate find in the poor man a flexible reed, who bends without breaking, whilst the storms of adversity tear the rich man like the sturdy oak in the forest, up by the very roots.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 16.”

If the covenant which unites man to society be considered, it will be obvious that every contract is conditional, must be reciprocal; that is to say, supposes mutual advantages between the contracting parties. The citizen cannot be bound to his country, to his associates, but by the bonds of happiness. Are these bonds cut asunder? He is restored to liberty. Society, or those who represent it, do they use him with harshness, do they treat him with injustice, do they render his existence painful? Does disgrace hold him out to the finger of scorn; does indigence menace him in an obdurate world? Perfidious friends, do they forsake him in adversity? An unfaithful wife, does she outrage his heart? Rebellious, ungrateful children, do they afflict his old age? Has he placed his happiness exclusively on some object which it is impossible for him to procure? Chagrin, remorse, melancholy, and despair, have they disfigured to him the spectacle of the universe? In short, for whatever cause it may be: if he is not able to support his evils, he quits a world, which from henceforth, is for him only a frightful desert he removes himself for ever from a country he thinks no longer willing to reckon him amongst the number of her children--he quits a house that to his mind is ready to bury him under its ruins--he renounces a society, to the happiness of which he can no longer contribute; which his own peculiar felicity alone can render dear to him: and could the man be blamed, who, finding himself useless; who being without resources, in the town where destiny gave him birth, should quit it in chagrin, to plunge himself in solitude?

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 14.”

Whatever may be the attachment man has to life, whatever may be his fear of death, it is every day witnessed, that habit, that opinion, that prejudice, are motives sufficiently powerful to annihilate these passions in his breast; to make him brave danger; to cause him to hazard his existence. Ambition, pride, jealousy, love, vanity, avarice, the desire of glory, that deference of opinion which is decorated with the sounding title of a point of honour, have the efficacy to make him shut his eyes to danger; to laugh at peril; to push him on to death: vexation, anxiety of mind, disgrace, want of success, softens to him its hard features; makes him regard it as a door that will afford him shelter from the injustice of mankind: indigence, trouble, adversity, familiarizes him with this death, so terrible to the happy. The poor man, condemned to labour, inured to privations, deprived of the comforts of life, views its approach with indifference: the unfortunate, when he is unhappy, when he is without resource, embraces it in despair; the wretched accelerates its march as soon as he sees that happiness is no longer within his grasp.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 14.”

In Prosperity prepare for Adversity. It is both wiser and easier to collect winter stores in summer. In prosperity favours are cheap and friends are many. ’Tis well therefore to keep them for more unlucky days, for adversity costs dear and has no helpers. Retain a store of friendly and obliged persons; the day may come when their price will go up. Low minds never have friends; in luck they will not recognise them: in misfortune they will not be recognised by them.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly—nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.
Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all."

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism/On the Sufferings of the World."

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me.

• Anne Brontë, The Bronte Sisters (ed. Penguin, 2009).

However this may be, he certainly did not allow them to enjoy this privilege without earning it, but only granted it to them after constant wars and prolonged toil; his intention being, I suppose, to prove whether the Romans were the only nation worthy to be the vicegerents of supreme Jove on earth. And so they were compelled to live a life of abstinence and hardship, and to find the new pleasures of peace always cut short by war's alarms and the clash of arms around them. In addition to this, they were under the necessity of providing garrisons, which they had frequently to renew, for the various cities and provinces they had conquered, and of sending nearly all their young men either to distant wars or to their colonies. Moreover the victories they gained were not always bloodless; on the contrary, they often suffered grievous disasters. So for example Brennus, the leader of the Gauls, almost succeeded in destroying the glory of Rome in its early bloom, and the noble city of Carthage came within a little of wresting from Rome the governance of the world with which she had been divinely entrusted. Lastly, the Goths and Vandals under their king Alaric, and the Huns and Pannonians under their leaders Attila and Bleda passed in a torrent over the whole of Italy, cruelly plundered the abounding riches of the empire, the accumulated spoils of so many wars, overwhelmed in shameful flight the Romans, who were but now the lords of mankind, and captured the city, captured Rome herself, by the mere terror of their name. No deed in fact or fable could be more remarkable than this. It is as if victory herself had either fallen in love with them or been panic-stricken by their prowess in arms, so as to be completely at their command.

• John Milton, “Prolusions: Prolusion 5.”

Ambition

Ambitious Men cheat themselves, when they fix upon any Ends for their Ambition. Those Ends, when they are attained to, are converted into Means, subordinate to something farther.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

The Court is the Peculiar, where Ambition is supream. All other Passions, even Love it self, and all Laws truckle under her; and there are no sorts of Unions but she can both knit together, and break asunder.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Men often go from Love to Ambition, but they seldom come back again from Ambition to Love.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Moderation is represented as a Vertue, with a Design to restrain the Ambition of Great Men; and to perswade those of a meaner Condition, to be contented with a less Proportion of Merit, and of Fortune.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Moderation can never have the honour of contending with Ambition, and subduing it; for they cannot possibly meet in the same Breast. Moderation is the Feebleness and Sloth of the Soul, whereas Ambition is the Warmth, and the Activity of it.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

It is a mighty Error, to suppose, that none but violent and strong Passions, such as Love and Ambition, are able to vanquish the rest: Even Idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; this usurps the Throne, and sits paramount over all the Designs and Actions of our Lives, and insensibly wastes and destroys all our Passions and all our Vertues.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

What we take for Generosity, is very often no other than Ambition well dissembled, that scorns mean Interests, only to pursue greater.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

The greatest Ambition does not appear at all so, when it finds what it would fain aspire to, absolutely impossible to be attained.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Our Aversion to a Lie, is commonly a secret Ambition, to make what we say considerable, and have every Word received with a religious Respect.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

When Great Men sink under the Length of their Misfortunes, this discovers, that it was not the Greatness of their Soul, but of their Ambition, that kept up their Spirits so long; and that, setting aside abundance of Vanity, Heroes are just like common Men.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

Those great and glorious Actions, that even dazle our Eyes with their Lustre, are represented by Politicians, as the result of great Wisdom, and excellent Design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the Effects of Passion and Humour. Thus the War between Augustus and Antony, which is usually thought to proceed from Greatness of Soul, and an Ambition that each of them had to become Master of the World, was, very probably, no more than Envy and Emulation.

• The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld.

But so wild is the nature of man, and so impudent the nature of ambition, that whereas the primitive heroes were the bulwarks of society, and the preservers of men, those who pretended to succeed them, were the disturbers of society, and the destroyers of men; and such tyrants and monsters as the old heroes had destroyed, did themselves (impudently) set up for heroes. With the same modesty, superstition, which destroys religion, has, in the greatest part of the world, usurped the place of religion; tyranny, which is the extirpation of government, calls itself government: And thus arose persecuting priests and lawless kings. But so are words and the world abused; and with so much safety, and even applause, is mischief committed, when it has but a good name.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 93." Written by Thomas Gordon.

So mechanical a thing is human judgment! So easily is the human machine disconcerted and put out of its tone! And the mind subsisting in it, and acting by it, is calm or ruffled as its vehicle is so. But though the various accidents and disorders happen ing to the body, are the certain causes of disorders and irregular operations in the mind; yet causes that are internal affect it still more; I mean the stimulations of ambition, revenge, lust, and avarice. These are the great causes of the several irregular and vicious pursuits of men.
Neither is it to be expected, that men disagreeing in interest, will ever agree in judgment. Wrong, with advantages attending it, will be turned into right, falsehood into truth; and, as often as reason is against a man, a man will be against reason: And both truth and right, when they thwart the interests and passions of men, will be used like enemies, and called names.
It is remarkable that men, when they differ in any thing considerable, or which they think considerable, will be apt to differ in almost every thing else. Their differences beget contradiction, contradiction begets heat, heat quickly rises into resentment, rage, and ill-will. Thus they differ in affections, as they differ in judgment; and the contention, which began in pride, ends in anger.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 47." Written by Thomas Gordon.

SIR, All men have an ambition to be considerable, and take such ways as their judgments suggest to become so. Hence proceeds the appetite of all men to rise above their fellows, and the constant emulation that always has been, and always will be, in the world, amongst all sorts of men. Nature has made them all equal, and most men seem well content with the lot of parts which nature has given them; but the lot of fortune never thoroughly satisfies those who have the best.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 43." Written by Thomas Gordon.

There is scarce any one of the passions but what is truly laudable when it centers in the publick, and makes that its object. Ambition, avarice, revenge, are all so many virtues, when they aim at the general welfare. I know that it is exceeding hard and rare, for any man to separate his passions from his own person and interest; but it is certain that there have been such men. Brutus, Cato, Regulus, Timoleon, Dion, and Epaminondas, were such, as were many more ancient Greeks and Romans; and, I hope, England has still some such. And though, in pursuing publick views, men regard themselves and their own advantages; yet if they regard the publick more, or their own in subserviency to the publick, they may justly be esteemed virtuous and good.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 39." Written by Thomas Gordon.

It is a favourable sign of publick spirit, though not a certain sign, when the interest and reputation of men rise and increase together; and there is policy and wisdom in it. He who acquires money in spite of fame, pays dear for his avarice, while it returns him hatred and curses, as well as gold; and to be rich and detested, is to me no pleasing character. The same holds true in regard to ambition, and every other passion, which breaks its bounds, and makes a captive of its owner. It is scarce possible to be a rogue and be beloved; and when men are arrived to an insensibility of popular censure and opinion concerning their honesty and dishonesty, it is a sign that they are at defiance with the community where they live, and that the rest ought to be upon their guard against them; they do as it were cut themselves off from the society, and teach the people what to call them.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 35." Written by Thomas Gordon.

Political jealousy, therefore, in the people, is a necessary and laudable passion. But in a chief magistrate, a jealousy of his people is not so justifiable, their ambition being only to preserve themselves; whereas it is natural for power to be striving to enlarge itself, and to be encroaching upon those that have none. The most laudable jealousy of a magistrate is to be jealous for his people; which will shew that he loves them, and has used them well: But to be jealous of them, would denote that he has evil designs against them, and has used them ill. The people's jealousy tends to preserve liberty; and the prince's to destroy it. Venice is a glorious instance of the former, and so is England; and all nations who have lost their liberty, are melancholy proofs of the latter.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 33." Written by Thomas Gordon.

Yet Nero was not the worst of all men: There have been thousands as bad as he, and only wanted the same opportunity to shew it. And there actually have been many princes in the world who have shed more blood, and done more mischief to mankind, than Nero did. I could instance in a late one, who destroyed more lives than ever Nero destroyed, perhaps an hundred to one. It makes no difference, that Nero committed butcheries out of cruelty, and the other only for his glory: However the world may be deceived by the change of names into an abhorrence of the one, and an admiration of the other; it is all one to a nation, when they are to be slaughtered, whether they be slaughtered by the hangman or by dragoons, in prison or in the field; nor is ambition better than cruelty, when it begets mischief as great.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 33." Written by Thomas Gordon.

The people have no bias to be knaves; the security of their persons and property is their highest aim. No ambition prompts them; they cannot come to be great lords, and to possess great titles, and therefore desire none. No aspiring or unsociable passions incite them; they have no rivals for place, no competitor to pull down; they have no darling child, pimp, or relation, to raise: they have no occasion for dissimulation or intrigue; they can serve no end by faction; they have no interest, but the general interest.
The same can rarely be said of great men, who, to gratify private passion, often bring down publick ruin; who, to fill their private purses with many thousands, frequently load the people with many millions; who oppress for a mistress, and, to save a favourite, destroy a nation; who too often make the publick sink and give way to their private fortune; and, for a private pleasure, create a general calamity. Besides, being educated in debauchery, and pampered in riot and luxury, they have no sense of the misfortunes of other men, nor tenderness for those who suffer them: They have no notion of miseries which they do not feel. There is a nation in Europe, which, within the space of an hundred years last past, has been blessed with patriots, who, void of every talent and inclination to do good, and even stinted in their ability for roguery, were forced to be beholden, for most of the mischief which they did, to the superior arts and abilities of humble rogues and brokers.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 24." Written by Thomas Gordon.

With Octavius himself there is still a way open for an accommodation, if we choose it. As eager as the name of Caesar has made that raw stickler for empire to destroy those who destroyed Caesar; yet, doubtless, he would give us good articles, to gain our consent to that power to which he aspires, and to which, I fear, he will arrive: Alas! what is there to hinder him? While we only attend to the love of life, and the impulses of ambition; while we can purchase posts and dignities with the price of liberty, and think danger more dreadful than slavery, what remains to save us?

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 23." Written by Thomas Gordon. Note: From Brutus to Cicero.

SIR, From the present spirit of this nation, it is still further evident to me, what I have always thought, that the people would constantly be in the interests of truth and liberty, were it not for external delusion and external force. Take away terror, and men never would have been slaves: Take away imposture, and men will never be dupes nor bigots. The people, when they are in the wrong, are generally in the wrong through mistake; and when they come to know it, are apt frankly to correct their own faults. Of which candour in them Machiavel has given several instances, and many more might be given.
But it is not so with great men, and the leaders of parties; who are, for the most part, in the wrong through ambition, and continue in the wrong through malice. Their intention is wicked, and their end criminal; and they commonly aggravate great crimes by greater. As great dunces as the governors of mankind often are (and God knows that they are often great enough), they are never traitors out of mere stupidity.
Machiavel says, That no wise man needs decline the judgment of the people in the distribution of offices and honours, and such particular affairs (in which I suppose he includes punishment) for in these things they are almost infallible.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 22." Written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.

Thus the Revolution and the principles of liberty ran backwards again. The banished Tarquin conceived new hopes, and made new attempts for a restoration: All who had shared in the benefits of the former wicked administration; all those who had ever been avowed enemies to an equal government, and impartial liberty; all the grim inquisitors, who had assumed an uncontrollable sovereignty over the free and ungovernable mind, men who have ever pretended a divine right to roguery, united in his interest: With these joined the riotous, the debauched, the necessitous, the poor deluded bigots, as well as all such who had not received rewards equal to their fancied merit, and would not bear to see others revel in advantages, which their own ambition and covetousness had before swallowed for themselves.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 20." Written by John Trenchard.

But what did all this profusion and magnificence produce? Pleasure succeeded in the room of temperance, idleness took place of the love of business, and private regards extinguished that love of liberty, that zeal and warmth, which their ancestors had shewn for the interest of the publick; luxury and pride became fashionable; all ranks and orders of men tried to outvie one another in expense and pomp; and when, by so doing, they had spent their private patrimonies, they endeavoured to make reprisals upon the publick; and, having before sold every thing else, at last sold their country.
The publick treasure was squandered away, and divided amongst private men; and new demands made, and new taxes and burdens laid upon the people, to continue and support this extravagance. Such conduct in the great ones occasioned murmurings, universal discontent, and at last civil wars. The people threw themselves under different heads or leaders of parties, who all aspired to make themselves masters of the commonwealth, and of the publick liberty; and, during the struggle, Rome and all Italy was but one slaughter-house. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, fell sacrifices to the ambition of a few: Rivers of blood ran in the publick streets, and proscriptions and massacres were esteemed sport and pastime; till at length two thirds of the people were destroyed, and the rest made slaves to the most wicked and contemptible wretches of mankind.
Thus ended the greatest, the noblest state that ever adorned the worldly theatre, that ever the sun saw: It fell a victim to ambition and faction, to base and unworthy men, to parricides and traitors; and every other nation must run the same fortune, expect the same fatal catastrophe, who suffer themselves to be debauched with the same vices, and are actuated by the same principles and passions.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 18." Written by John Trenchard.

Nor can it be expected that men, who have been raised to power by such execrable means, should ever use it to the benefit of mankind, or to any good end. They will always proceed in the same steps where they began; and use, for the support of their greatness, the same vile measures by which they acquired their greatness, till they have at length sacrificed all things in heaven and earth to their ambition.

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 14." Written by John Trenchard.

Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.

• C. S. Lewis,

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

• C. S. Lewis, Letter XVI - The Screwtape Letters (1942).

“You know that ambition for material things has not mastered me; but I have desired the opportunity for public service so that my virtue should not grow old and weak through lack of use.”
Such minds can be led on by desire for glory and the fame of having deserved well of their commonwealth. But think how trivial and empty such glory is. You know from astrological computation that the whole circumference of the earth is no more than a pinpoint when contrasted to the space of the heavens; in fact, if the two are compared, the earth may be considered to have no size at all. Moreover, as you learned from Ptolemy, only a quarter of this tiny part of the universe is known to be inhabited by living things. And if you mentally subtract from this quarter of the earth all of the area occupied by seas, marshland, and arid deserts, there is almost no space left for human habitation. Do you, therefore, aspire to spread your fame and enhance your reputation when you are confined to this insignificant area on a tiny, earth? How can glory be great that is severely limited by such narrow boundaries.

• Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy.

But the worst is that my enemies readily believe that wisdom itself is capable of the crime of ambition, and so they associate me with such misconduct because I am imbued with your knowledge and endowed with your virtues. So, my reverence for you is no help; their hatred of me leads them to dishonor you.
"Finally, and this is the last straw, the judgment of most people is based not on the merits of a case but on the fortune of its outcome; they think that only things which turn out happily are good. As a result, the first thing an unfortunate man loses is his good reputation. I cannot bear to think of the rumors and various opinions that are now going around; I can only say that the final misery of adverse fortune is that when some poor man is accused of a crime, it is thought that he deserves whatever punishment he has to suffer. Well, here am I, stripped of my possessions and honors, my reputation ruined, punished because I tried to do good.

• Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy.

The Church of the Saints is found defiled by the mingling of the wicked; and her children, whom she has conceived and nourished from childhood in her bosom, are the very ones who carry into her heart, that is to the participation in her most august mysteries, the most cruel of her enemies, the spirit of the world, the spirit of ambition, the spirit of vengeance, the spirit of impurity, the spirit of concupiscence and the love that she has for her children obliges her to admit into her very bowels the most cruel of her persecutors.

• "Blaise Pascal/Comparison Between Christians of Early Times and Those of To-Day."

I love poverty because He loved it. I love riches because they afford me the means of helping the very poor. I keep faith with everybody; I do not render evil to those who wrong me, but I wish them a lot like mine, in which I receive neither evil nor good from men. I try to be just, true, sincere, and faithful to all men; I have a tender heart for those to whom God has more closely united me; and whether I am alone, or seen of men, I do all my actions in the sight of God, who must judge of them, and to whom I have consecrated them all.
These are my sentiments; and every day of my life I bless my Redeemer, who has implanted them in me, and who, of a man full of weakness, of miseries, of lust, of pride, and of ambition, has made a man free from all these evils by the power of His grace, to which all the glory of it is due, as of myself I have only misery and error.

• "Blaise Pascal/Thoughts/Section 7."

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man…? What, then, can we have but esteem for a religion which knows so well the defects of man, and desire for the truth of a religion which promises remedies so desirable?

• "Blaise Pascal/Thoughts/Section 7."

Ambition jostles with her Friends no more;
Nor thirsts Revenge to drink a Brother’s Gore;
Fiery Remorse no stinging Scorpions rears:
O’er trembling Guilt no falling Sword appears.
Hence Conscience, void of Blame, her Front erects,
Her God she fears, all other Fear rejects.
Hence just Ambition boundless Splendors crown,
And hence she calls Eternity her own.
Rob not God, nor the Poor, lest thou ruin thyself; the Eagle snatcht a Coal from the Altar, but it fired her Nest.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0146.

Thus still should private Friendships spread around,
Till in their joint Embrace the Publick’s found,
The common Friend! Then all her Good explore;
Explor’d, pursue with each unbiass’d Power.
But chief the greatest should her Laws revere,
Ennobling Honours, which she bids them wear.
Ambition fills with Charity the Mind,
And pants to be the Friend of all Mankind.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0146.

Hence bravely strive upon your own to raise
Their Honour, Grandeur, Dignity and Praise.
But wider far, beyond the narrow Bound
Of Family, Ambition searches round;
Searches to find the Friend’s delightful Face,
The Friend at least demands the second Place.
And yet beware; for most desire a Friend
From meaner Motives, not for Virtue’s End.
There are, who with fond Favour’s fickle Gale
Now sudden swell, and now contract their Sail;
Silence in not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a Mark of Folly.
Great Modesty often hides great Merit.
You may delay, but Time will not.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0146.

I know, young Friend, Ambition fills your Mind,
And in Life’s Voyage is th’impelling Wind;
But at the Helm let sober Reason stand,
And steer the Bark with Heav’n-directed Hand:
So shall you safe Ambition’s Gales receive,
And ride securely, tho’ the Billows heave;
So shall you shun the giddy Hero’s Fate,
And by her Influence be both good and great.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0146.

Whom Love of Wealth, or wild Ambition’s Sway
Push forward, still regardless of the Way;
High and more high who aim with restless Pride
Where neither Reason nor fair Virtue guide;
And Him, the Wretch, who labours on with Pain
For the low Lucre of an useless Gain,
(Wise but to get, and active but to save)
May Scorn deserv’d still follow to the Grave.
But he who fond to raise a splendid Name,
On Life’s ambitious Heights would fix his Fame,
In active Arts, or ventrous Arms would shine,
Yet shuns the Paths which Virtue bids decline;
Who dignifies his Wealth by gen’rous Use,
To raise th’Oppress’d, or Merit to produce,
Reason’s impartial Voice shall ne’er condemn,
The glorious Purpose of so wise an Aim.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1757,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0030.

Ambition to be greater and richer, merely that a Man may have it in his Power to do more Service to his Friends and the Publick, is of a quiet orderly Kind, pleased if it succeeds, resigned if it fails. But the Ambition that has itself only in View, is restless, turbulent, regardless of publick Peace, or general Interest, and the secret Maker of most Mischiefs, between Nations, Parties, Friends and Neighbours.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1757,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-07-02-0030.

Till lost and bury’d in the distant Grove.
Wrapt into sacred Musing, he reclines
Beneath the Covert of embow’ring Shades;
And, painting to his Mind the bustling Scenes
Of Pride and bold Ambition, pities Kings.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1755,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-05-02-0136.

Nor Pageants of Ambition, nor the Mines
Of grasping Av’rice, nor the poison’d Sweets
Of pamper’d Luxury, he plants his Foot
With Firmness on his old paternal Fields,
And stands unshaken. There sweet Prospects rise
Of Meadows smiling in their flow’ry Pride,
Green Hills and Dales, and Cottages embower’d,
The Scenes of Innocence, and calm Delight.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1755,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-05-02-0136.

Nothing humbler than Ambition, when it is about to climb.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1753,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0148.

Ambition often spends foolishly what Avarice had wickedly collected.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1751,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0029.

’Tis a laudable Ambition, that aims at being better than his Neighbours.

• Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard Improved, 1749,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0143.

There is no Man in Boston better qualified than old Janus for a Couranteer, or if you please, an Observator, being a Man of such remarkable Opticks, as to look two ways at once.
As for his Morals, he is a chearly Christian, as the Country Phrase expresses it. A Man of good Temper, courteous Deportment, sound Judgment; a mortal Hater of Nonsense, Foppery, Formality, and endless Ceremony.
As for his Club, they aim at no greater Happiness or Honour, than the Publick be made to know, that it is the utmost of their Ambition to attend upon and do all imaginable good Offices to good Old Janus the Couranteer, who is and always will be the Readers humble Servant.

• Benjamin Franklin, “The Printer to the Reader, 11 February 1723,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0023.

Almost every Man has a strong natural Desire of being valu’d and esteem’d by the rest of his Species; but I am concern’d and griev’d to see how few fall into the Right and only infallible Method of becoming so. That laudable Ambition is too commonly misapply’d and often ill employ’d. Some to make themselves considerable pursue Learning, others grasp at Wealth, some aim at being thought witty, and others are only careful to make the most of an handsome Person; But what is Wit, or Wealth, or Form, or Learning when compar’d with Virtue? ’Tis true, we love the handsome, we applaud the Learned, and we fear the Rich and Powerful; but we even Worship and adore the Virtuous. Nor is it strange; since Men of Virtue, are so rare, so very rare to be found. If we were as industrious to become Good, as to make ourselves Great, we should become really Great by being Good, and the Number of valuable Men would be much increased; but it is a Grand Mistake to think of being Great without Goodness; and I pronounce it as certain, that there was never yet a truly Great Man that was not at the same Time truly Virtuous.

• Benjamin Franklin, “The Busy-Body, No. 3, 18 February 1729,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0037.

Among these witty Gentlemen let us take a View of Ridentius: What a contemptible Figure does he make with his Train of paultry Admirers? This Wight shall give himself an Hours Diversion with the Cock of a Man’s Hat, the Heels of his Shoes, an unguarded Expression in his Discourse, or even some Personal Defect; and the Height of his low Ambition is to put some One of the Company to the Blush, who perhaps must pay an equal Share of the Reckoning with himself. If such a Fellow makes Laughing the sole End and Purpose of his Life, if it is necessary to his Constitution, or if he has a great Desire of growing suddenly fat, let him treat; let him give publick Notice where any dull stupid Rogues may get a Quart of Four-penny for being laugh’d at; but ’tis barbarously unhandsome, when Friends meet for the Benefit of Conversation, and a proper Relaxation from Business, that one should be the Butt of the Company, and Four Men made merry at the Cost of the Fifth.

• Benjamin Franklin, “The Busy-Body, No. 2, 11 February 1729,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0036.

As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this.

• Benjamin Disraeli, Henrietta Temple.

It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be ob-tained or retained.

• Benjamin Disraeli, Wit and Wisdom (ed. 1881).

This endeavor to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavor to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt: in other cases it is generally called kindliness.

• Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics 3, Propositions 28-36.

Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back;
And is a swelling, and the last affection
A high mind can put off; being both a rebel
Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth
All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion,
and offereth violence to nature's self.

• Ben Jonson.

A philosopher whose wants are easily satisfied, who is a stranger, to ambition, who is contented with the limited circle of a small number of friends, is, without doubt a being much more happily constituted than an ambitious conqueror, whose greedy imagination is reduced to despair by having only one world to ravage. He who is happily born, or whom nature has rendered susceptible of being conveniently modified, is not a being injurious to society: it is generally disturbed by men who are unhappily born, whose organization renders them turbulent; who are discontented with their destiny; who are inebriated with their own licentious passions; who are infatuated with their own vile schemes; who are smitten with difficult enterprises; who set the world in combustion, to gather imaginary benefits in order to attain which they must inflict he heaviest curses on mankind, but in which they make their own happiness consist. An ALEXANDER requires the destruction of empires, nations to be deluged with blood, cities to be laid in ashes, its inhabitants to be exterminated, to content that passion for glory, of which he has formed to himself a false idea; but which his too ardent imagination, his too vehement mind anxiously thirsts after: for a DIOGENES there needs only a tub with the liberty of appearing whimsical; a SOCRATES wants nothing but the pleasure of forming disciples to virtue.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 15.”

Whatever may be the attachment man has to life, whatever may be his fear of death, it is every day witnessed, that habit, that opinion, that prejudice, are motives sufficiently powerful to annihilate these passions in his breast; to make him brave danger; to cause him to hazard his existence. Ambition, pride, jealousy, love, vanity, avarice, the desire of glory, that deference of opinion which is decorated with the sounding title of a point of honour, have the efficacy to make him shut his eyes to danger; to laugh at peril; to push him on to death: vexation, anxiety of mind, disgrace, want of success, softens to him its hard features; makes him regard it as a door that will afford him shelter from the injustice of mankind: indigence, trouble, adversity, familiarizes him with this death, so terrible to the happy. The poor man, condemned to labour, inured to privations, deprived of the comforts of life, views its approach with indifference: the unfortunate, when he is unhappy, when he is without resource, embraces it in despair; the wretched accelerates its march as soon as he sees that happiness is no longer within his grasp.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 14.”

On the face of this globe, may be frequently witnessed unjust sovereigns, who, enervated by luxury, corrupted by flattery, depraved by licentiousness, made wicked by impunity, devoid of talents, without morals, destitute of virtue, are incapable of exerting any energy for the benefit of the states they govern; they are consequently but little occupied with the welfare of their people; indifferent to their duties; of which indeed they are often ignorant. Such governors suffer their whole attention to be absorbed by frivolous amusement; stimulated by the desire of continually finding means to feed their insatiable ambition they engage in useless depopulating wars; and never occupy their mind with those objects which are the most important to the happiness of their nation: yet these weak men feel interested in maintaining the received prejudices, and visit with severity those who consider the means of curing them: in short themselves deprived of that understanding, which teaches man that it is his interest to be kind, just, and virtuous; they ordinarily reward only those crimes which their imbecility makes them imagine as useful to them; they generally punish those virtues which are opposed to their own imprudent passions, but which reason would point out as truly beneficial to their interests. Under such masters is it surprising that society should be ravaged; that weak beings should be willing to imitate them; that perverse men should emulate each other in oppressing its members; in sacrificing its dearest interests; in despoiling its happiness? The state of society in such countries, is a state of hostility of the sovereign against the whole, of each of its members the one against the other.

• Baron d’Holbach, “System of Nature - Part 1, Chapter 14.”

Choose an Heroic Ideal; but rather to emulate than to imitate. There are exemplars of greatness, living texts of honour. Let every one have before his mind the chief of his calling not so much to follow him as to spur himself on. Alexander wept not on account of Achilles dead and buried, but over himself, because his fame had not yet spread throughout the world. Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another's fame. The same thing that sharpens envy, nourishes a generous spirit.

• Baltasar Gracián, “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” tr. by Joseph Jacobs, [1892]

You know that in war what really spurs men on to bold deeds is the desire for glory, whereas anyone who acts for gain or from any other motive not only fails to accomplish anything worth while but deserves to be called a miserable merchant rather than a gentleman. And it is true glory that is entrusted to the sacred treasury of letters, as everyone knows except those who are so unfortunate as not to have made their acquaintance. When he reads about the great deeds of Caesar, Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal and all the others, who is so cringing, timorous and abject that he does not burn with the ambition to emulate them and is not ready to relinquish his all too brief natural life in favour of an almost eternal fame, which makes him live on more splendidly after death? But those who do not appreciate the pleasures of learning cannot realize how great is the glory that they preserve for so long, and measure it only by the life of one or two men, since their own memories are limited.

• Baldesar Castiglione, How to Achieve True Greatness, Bk 1, pg. 39.

And I believe that he alone is a true moral philosopher who wishes to be good; and for this he needs few precepts other than the ambition itself. Therefore Socrates was perfectly right in affirming that in his opinion his teaching bore good fruit when it encouraged someone to strive to know and understand virtue; for those who have reached the stage where they desire nothing more eagerly than to be good have no trouble in learning all that is necessary. So I shall say no more about this.

• Baldesar Castiglione, How to Achieve True Greatness, Bk 1, pg. 36.

And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain, which man has established for himself, also as the result of using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all his other interests put together—I mean ambition and the feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he thinks about the opinion other people have of him. Taking a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are not rooted in physical pleasure or pain.

• Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism/On the Sufferings of the World."

Ever since childhood I have scorned the commonplace limits so often set upon human ambition. Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone; best both for the body and the mind

• Einstein on Politics (ed. Princeton University Press, 2013).

Although I am far from that wisdom which reached its height in Plato, still the little knowledge of literature that I have has freed me from the disease of avarice and ambition and taught me that the happiness all men seek is not to be found by amassing wealth, nor by gaining what the crowd thinks are honors, but by living in tranquility and freedom of spirit. I speak now of the sort of happiness to which a person placed in civic life can aspire in this valley of tears. Not that I have ever wanted to live passively in a state of idleness. An inactive and slothful life weakens the nerves of body and brain. But I have aimed for the middle way which would make me every day a better man. I am always learning something and becoming potentially more useful, should the state ever require my services. Since, as I remarked before, it is less painful to hear than to see things you cannot approve of, I spend much of my time alone, in converse with my own mind or with the books you have seen here, and I enjoy the liberty I wholly believe in. I have apportioned my time so that not a particle of it is wasted. I am always attending to my bodily health by taking exercise, or concerning myself with domestic matters, or cultivating my mind by reading and meditation. For nothing worth writing has come to my mind, seeing how much there is already in the way of all sorts of books, and how well they have been written in both ancient and modern times. If Nestor or Titonus were to return to life and devote all his years to reading, I think he would hardly find time for my contribution—if I wrote. If something were occasionally to bring me friends like you, therefore, to visit me here, I would not exchange my life for the life of those the poets call blessed, who inhabit the Elysian fields. Whatever it may be, I think my life is more blessed than the life of a city person, burdened by constant anxiety, humiliated by being unable to move a finger of his own will.

• Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogue on Liberty, bk 2, 1479.

Shall I talk about ambition too? Tossed about by vicissitudes, ambitious men constantly attempt to command undistinguished little wretches. And, for the appearance of being in command, they actually subject themselves to men even worse than they are. Let’s not list all the kinds of vice that enslave men and oppress them. I shall just cite the Stoic paradox, which is as true as it is elegant: “Only the wise are free.”

• Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogue on Liberty, bk 1, 1479.

The play of ambition and bribery or the wishes of the powerful are always involved. As a result the sentence often favors, not the man with right on his side, but the one with influence. There are many to tell how they have been forced out of their houses and lost their inheritance. They have been despoiled by force and fraud of their homes, their money, and all that they possess.

• Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogue on Liberty, bk 1, 1479.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

• Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature (9 March 1832)

The ambition for broad acres leads to poor farming, even with men of energy. I scarcely ever knew a mammoth farm to sustain itself; much less to return a profit upon the outlay. I have more than once known a man to spend a respectable fortune upon one; fail and leave it; and then some man of more modest aims, get a small fraction of the ground, and make a good living upon it. Mammoth farms are like tools or weapons, which are too heavy to be handled. Ere long they are thrown aside, at a great loss.

• Abraham Lincoln, An address given before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, in Milwaukee, on (30 September 1859)

The same ambition can destroy or save,
And make a patriot as it makes a knave.
This light and darkness in our chaos join'd,
What shall divide? the God within the mind.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce,
In man they join to some mysterious use;
Tho' each by turns the other's bounds invade,
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,
And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice,
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.

• Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man/Chapter 4."

If plagues or earthquakes break not heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline?
Who knows but he, whose hand the light'ning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?

• Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man/Chapter 3."

AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot,
Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.

• Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man/Chapter 3."

Nature well known, no Miracles remain,
Comets are regular, and Clodio plain.
Yet, in the search, the wisest may mistake,
If second Qualities for first they take.
When Catiline by rapine swell'd his store,
When Cæsar made a noble Dame a whore,
In this the Lust, in that the Avarice
Were means, not ends; Ambition was the Vice.
That very Cæsar, born in Scipio's days,
Had aim'd, like him, by Chastity at praise:
Lucullus, when Frugality could charm,
Had roasted Turnips in the Sabin farm:
In vain th' Observer eyes the Builder's toil,
But quite mistakes the Scaffold for the Pile.
In this one Passion Man can strength enjoy,
As Fits give vigour, just when they destroy.
Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand,
Yet tames not this: It sticks to our last sand.
Consistent in our follies, and our sins,
Here honest Nature ends as she begins.

• Alexander Pope, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard, Lord Viscount Cobham."

Come purge my soul, Thou Master of my days,
Of vain and empty words, of idle ways,
Of base ambition and the urge to rule;
That hidden serpent that corrupts a fool;
and grant me, Lord, to see my sins alone.

• A Prayer as quoted in Pushkin, Alexander (2009). Selected Lyric Poetry. Northwestern University Press, p. 199.

Like Kings we lose the Conquests gain'd before,
By vain Ambition still to make them more:
Each might his sev'ral Province well command,
Wou'd all but stoop to what they understand.

• Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism."

Ambition
Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink
The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.

• Alfred Tennyson, The Cup. Act i. Scene 3.

Ambition.
Either be far from ambition: or serve her willingly: or abstain entirely.
It will be unworthy of a laurel fearing dangers.

• “Julius Caesar Scaliger: Epidorpides.” Epidorpidum. Book 1.

Ambition.
While ambition plays around you, while you are below it:
It is done, sadness utterly overcomes care.
Why does not your worthy cause assert itself to you?
Why are you not standing firm in spirit? Why not freely,
As if unfettered, do you raise yourself to heavenly matters, to your homeland?

• “Julius Caesar Scaliger: Epidorpides.” Epidorpidum. Book 4.

Let the ambitious man, therefore, turn all his desire of fame this way; and, that he may propose to himself a fame worthy of his ambition, let him consider, that if he employs his abilities to the best advantage, the time will come when the Supreme Governor of the world, the great Judge of mankind, who sees every degree of perfection in others, and possesses all possible perfection in himself, shall proclaim his worth before men and angels, and pronounce to him in the presence of the whole creation that best and most significant of applauses, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into thy Master’s joy.”

• Joseph Addison.

AMBITION A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MORAL SENSE.—The moral sense must not be lacking in those natures which have no ambition. The ambitious manage without it, with almost the same results. For this reason the sons of unpretentious, unambitious families, when once they lose the moral sense, generally degenerate very quickly into complete scamps.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

Would any person not think that to Cimon and Clitandre alone are intrusted all the details of the State, and that they alone are answerable for them? The one manages at least everything concerning agriculture and land, and the other is at the head of the navy. Whoever will give a sketch of them must express bustle, restlessness, curiosity, activity, and paint Hurry itself. We never see them sitting, standing, or stopping; no one has ever seen them walk; for they are always running, and they speak whilst running, and do not wait for an answer; they never come from any place, or go anywhere, but are always passing to and fro. Stop them not in their hurried course, for you would break their machinery; do not ask them any questions, or, if you do, give them at least time to breathe and to remember that they have nothing to do, can stay with you long, and follow you wherever you are pleased to lead them. They do not, like Jupiter’s satellites, crowd round and encompass their prince, but precede him and give notice of his coming: they rush with impetuosity through the crowd of courtiers, and all who stand in their way are in danger. Their profession is to be seen again and again, and they never go to bed without having acquitted themselves of such an important duty, so beneficial to the commonwealth. They know, besides, all the circumstances of every petty accident, and are acquainted with anything at court people wish to ignore; they possess all the qualifications necessary for a small post. Nevertheless they are eager and watchful about anything they think will suit them as well as slightly enterprising, thoughtless, and precipitate. In a word, they both carry their heads very high, and are harnessed to the chariot of Fortune, but are never likely to sit in it.

• Jean de La Bruyere, The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère. New York: Scribner & Welford, 1885; Bartleby.com, 2011.

The origin of this disorder came from the ambition that gripped everyone to seek every honor and to abuse one’s liberty insolently, which is natural among all peoples who are not well governed. This desire was fostered by the law that included among those eligible for office everyone who won more than half the votes, and that then selected the victor by lot among them. In an assembly where so many are ambitions, so many are evil, and so many are ignorant, it is no wonder that many are able to obtain such a [bare] majority. The method of selecting the men with the most votes should be adopted again, as it was employed in the first years of the council. Clearly, it was evident that, ut plurimum, elections were good then. Indeed, had this method been preserved, elections would have progressively improved as the state became more consolidated and as fewer suspect men would alter the judgment of the people.

• Francesco Guicciardini, On the Mode of Reordering the Popular Government (1512).

The time will come when the masses will be ready to sacrifice their lives, their goods and chattels, their consciences and their virtue, for the purpose of securing that highest of enjoyments and of ruling either in reality or in imagination as a victorious, tyrannical, arbitrary nation over other nations. On these occasions the prodigal, devotel, hopeful, confident, overweening, fantastical feelings will spring forth in such abundance as to allow the ambitious or wisely provident prince to rush into a war and to make the good consciences of his people an excuse for his injustice. The great conquerors have always had the pathetic language of virtue on their lips: they always and crowds of people around them, who felt as though in a state of exaltation, and who would not listen to any but the most exalted language. Such is the curious madness of moral judgments! When man feels the sense of power, he feels and calls himself good: and at the very same time others, who have to endure the weight of his power, feel and call him evil! Hesiodus, in the fable of the world's ages, has twice in succession pictured the same age, namely that of the Homeric heroes, and has made two out of one: to those who either were under the terrible iron heel of these advrenturous despots or had heard about them from their ancestors, it appeared evil: but the descendants of the knightly races worshipped it in a good old blissful, semi-blissful age. Hence the poet had no alternative but to do as he did—his audience was probably composed of descendants of either race.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Dawn of the Day/Book 3."

OF all Men, that distinguish themselves by memorable Atchievements, the first Place of Honour, in my Opinion, is due to Legislators, and Founders of States, who transmit a System of Laws and Institutions to secure the Peace, Happiness and Liberty of future Generations. The Influence of useful Inventions in the Arts and Sciences may, perhaps, extend farther than those of wise Laws, whose Effects are limited both in Time and Place; but the Benefit arising from the former is not so sensible as that which proceeds from the latter. Speculative Sciences, do, indeed, improve the Mind; but this Advantage reaches only to a few Persons, who have Leisure to apply themselves to them. And as to practical Arts, which encrease the Commodities and Enjoyments of Life; 'tis well known, that Men's Happiness consists not so much in an Abundance of these, as in the Peace and Security with which they possess them: And these Blessings can only be derived from good Government. Not to mention, that general Virtue and good Morals in a State, which are so requisite to Happiness, can never arise from the most refined Precepts of Philosophy, or even the severest Injunctions of Religion; but must proceed entirely from a virtuous Education, the Effect of wise Laws and Institutions. I must, therefore, be of a different Opinion from my Lord Bacon in this Particular, and must regard Antiquity as somewhat unjust in in its Distribution of Honour, when it made Gods of all the Inventors of useful Arts, such as Ceres, Bacchus, Æsculapius; and dignified Legislators, such as Romulus and Theseus, only with the Appellation of Demi-Gods and Heroes.

• David Hume, "Essays, Moral and Political/Essay 10."

This ambition therefore amongst men, of leaving an illustrious posterity, is mere self-love; a passion to survive themselves, and to make a figure after they are dead. To gratify this passion, men in all stations often take wild and unaccountable courses: They employ great pains for that which they can never enjoy, and run many dangers for what they will never reap: They drudge, and laboriously contrive ways to wear themselves out, they deny themselves rest and ease, and the comforts of life, that some future men, whom they know not, may live in idleness and abundance, and perhaps despise these their careful and penurious ancestors, who painfully provided for them the means of luxury, and enabled them to be insolent, or debauched, or insignificant to society. They are indeed generally but even with one another: The descendent receives, without gratitude, an estate which his ancestor left him without affection. People would take it greatly amiss, if you supposed that they wanted honour for their ancestors, or regard to their posterity; and that they themselves were the only real objects of all this regard, and of that honour. But let them ask themselves, whether they would restore to their grandfather again the estate which he left them, were he to rise from the dead, and demand it? or, whether they are willing to part with it to their children before their own death? or, if they sometimes do, whether they have not other motives besides paternal affection? and, whether their own credit and vanity be not the strongest?

• "Cato's Letters/Letter 112." Written by John Trenchard.

The ambition to create value evokes every kind of ability, government becomes a manufacturing corporation, and every house a mill. The headlong bias to utility will let no talent lie in a napkin, – if possible, will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. An Englishman, while he eats and drinks no more, or not much more than another man, labors three times as many hours in the course of a year, as any other European; or, his life as a workman is three lives. He works fast. Every thing in England is at a quick pace. They have reinforced their own productivity, by the creation of that marvellous machinery which differences this age from any other age.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits/Wealth.

ARTIST’S AMBITION.— The Greek artists, the tragedians for example, poetized in order to conquer; their whole art cannot be thought of apart from contest: Hesiod’s good Eris, ambition, gave their genius its wings. Now this ambition demands above all that their work should preserve the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understand excellence, that is to say, without reference to a dominating taste or the general opinion as to what constitutes excellence in a work of art; and thus Aeschylus and Euripides were for a long time unsuccessful until they had finally educated judges of art who assessed their work according to the standards they themselves laid down. It is thus they aspire to victory over their competitors as they understand victory, a victory before their own seat of judgment, they want actually to be more excellent; then they exact agreement from others as to their own assessment of themselves and confirmation of their own judgment. To aspire to honor here means: “to make oneself superior and to wish this superiority to be publicly acknowledged." If the former is lacking and the latter nonetheless still demanded, one speaks of vanity. If the latter is lacking and its absence not regretted, one speaks of pride.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human All-Too-Human."

Antiquary

We were hinted by the occasion, not catched the opportunity to write of old things, or intrude upon the Antiquary. We are coldly drawn unto discourses of Antiquities, who have scarce time before us to comprehend new things, or make out learned Novelties. But seeing they arose as they lay, almost in silence among us, at least in short account suddenly passed over; we were very unwilling they should die again, and be buried twice among us.

• Thomas Browne, “Hydriotaphia: The Epistle Dedicatory.”

He had … that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary.

• Thomas Babington Macaulay.

It is lamented by Hearne, the learned antiquary of Oxford, that this general forgetfulness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and records; as their employment consists first in collecting, and afterwards in arranging or abstracting what libraries afford them, they ought to amass no more than they can digest; but when they have undertaken a work, they go on searching and transcribing, call for new supplies, when they are already overburthened, and at last leave their work unfinished. It is, says he, the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him.
Thus, not only in the slumber of sloth, but in the dissipation of ill-directed industry, is the shortness of life generally forgotten. As some men lose their hours in laziness, because they suppose, that there is time enough for the reparation of neglect; others busy themselves in providing that no length of life may want employment; and it often happens, that sluggishness and activity are equally surprised by the last summons, and perish not more differently from each other, than the fowl that received the shot in her flight, from her that is killed upon the bush.

• “No. 71. No Man Believes That His Own Life Will Be Short.” Samuel Johnson’s Essays, 1750, www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/believes-that-short/.

An alchemist spends his fortunes to find out the philosopher's stone forsooth, cure all diseases, make men long-lived, victorious, fortunate, invisible, and beggars himself, misled by those seducing impostors (which he shall never attain) to make gold; an antiquary consumes his treasure and time to scrape up a company of old coins, statues, rules, edicts, manuscripts, &c., he must know what was done of old in Athens, Rome, what lodging, diet, houses they had, and have all the present news at first, though never so remote, before all others, what projects, counsels, consultations, &c., quid Juno in aurem insusurret Jovi, what's now decreed in France, what in Italy: who was he, whence comes he, which way, whither goes he, &c. Aristotle must find out the motion of Euripus; Pliny must needs see Vesuvius, but how sped they? One loseth goods, another his life; Pyrrhus will conquer Africa first, and then Asia: he will be a sole monarch, a second immortal, a third rich; a fourth commands. [2366] Turbine magno spes solicitae in urbibus errant; we run, ride, take indefatigable pains, all up early, down late, striving to get that which we had better be without, (Ardelion's busybodies as we are) it were much fitter for us to be quiet, sit still, and take our ease.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

This was the common tenet and practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed not long since, in the first book of his history; their universities were generally base, not a philosopher, a mathematician, an antiquary, &c., to be found of any note amongst them, because they had no set reward or stipend, but every man betook himself to divinity, hoc solum in votis habens, opimum sacerdotium, a good parsonage was their aim. This was the practice of some of our near neighbours, as Lipsius inveighs, “they thrust their children to the study of law and divinity, before they be informed aright, or capable of such studies.” Scilicet omnibus artibus antistat spes lucri, et formosior est cumulus auri, quam quicquid Graeci Latinique delirantes scripserunt. Ex hoc numero deinde veniunt ad gubernacula reipub. intersunt et praesunt consiliis regum, o pater, o patria? so he complained, and so may others. For even so we find, to serve a great man, to get an office in some bishop's court (to practise in some good town) or compass a benefice, is the mark we shoot at, as being so advantageous, the highway to preferment.

• Robert Burton, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, — from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, — if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays: First Series/History."

I have seen an antiquary lick an old coin, among other trials, to distinguish the age of it by its taste.

• Joseph Addison.

Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary’s study, not; the black stain on a soldier’s face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.

• John Ruskin, Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M. (ed. 1866).

If in his study he hath so much care
To hang all old strange things, let his wife beware.

• “Antiquary by John Donne.” Allpoetry.com, 2024, allpoetry.com/Antiquary.

It is certain, however, that the man who is an ordinary mathematician, natural philosopher, philologist, antiquary, artist, sculptor, musician, or who has only a moderate acquaintance with a single ancient or foreign language, is usually more respected, even in large towns, than a really remarkable philosopher, poet, or writer. Consequently, poetry and philosophy, the noblest, grandest, and most arduous of things pertaining to humanity, and the supreme efforts of art and science, are in the present day the most neglected faculties in the world, even in their professed followers. Manual arts rank higher than these noble things; for no one would pretend to a knowledge of them unless he really possessed it, nor could this knowledge be acquired without study and exertion. In short, the poet and the philosopher derive no benefit in life from their genius and studies, except perhaps the glory rendered to them by a very few people. Poetry and philosophy resemble each other in that they are both as unproductive and barren of esteem and honour, as of all other advantages.

• Giacomo Leopardi, Essays and Dialogues.

"But," one will say, "he is not a thinker but mainly a depository of thought, a man of great learning in all previous philosophies. Of these he can always say something that his scholars do not know." This is actually the third, and the most dangerous, concession made by philosophy to the state, when it is compelled to appear in the form of erudition, as the knowledge (more specifically) of the history of philosophy. The genius looks purely and lovingly on existence, like a poet, and cannot dive too deep into it;—and nothing is more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the innumerable strange and wrong-headed opinions. The learned history of the past was never a true philosopher's business, in India or Greece; and a professor of philosophy who busies himself with such matters must be, at best, content to hear it said of him, "He is an able scholar, antiquary, philologist, historian,"—but never, "He is a philosopher." I said, "at best": for a scholar feels that most of the learned works written by University philosophers are badly done, without any real scientific power, and generally are dread- fully tedious. Who will blow aside, for example, the Lethean vapour with which the history of Greek philosophy has been enveloped by the dull though not very scientific works of Ritter, Brandis and Zeller? I, at any rate, would rather read Diogenes Laertius than Zeller, because at least the spirit of the old philosophers lives in Diogenes, but neither that nor any other spirit in Zeller.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator."

ANTIQUES.
LEOPOLD, DUKE OF BRUNSWICK.
Thou wert forcibly seized by the hoary lord of the river,—
Holding thee, ever he shares with thee his streaming domain.
Calmly sleepest thou near his urn as it silently trickles,
Till thou to action art roused, waked by the swiftrolling flood.
Kindly be to the people, as when thou still wert a mortal.
Perfecting that as a god, which thou didst fail in, as man.

• The Works of J. W. von Goethe/Volume 9/Leopold, Duke of Brunswick

A thorough-paced antiquary not only remembers what all other people have thought proper to forget, but he also forgets what all other people think is proper to remember.

• Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon.

He felt like an antiquary whose shield had been scoured, or a connoisseur who found his Titian retouched. But, however he came by an opinion, he had no sooner got it than he did his best to make out a legitimate title to it. His reason, like a spirit in the service of an enchanter, though spell-bound, was still mighty. It did whatever work his passions and his imagination might impose. But it did that work, however arduous, with marvellous dexterity and vigour. His course was not determined by argument; but he could defend the wildest course by arguments more plausible than those by which common men support opinions which they have adopted after the fullest deliberation. Reason has scarcely ever displayed, even in those well-constituted minds of which she occupies the throne, so much power and energy as in the lowest offices of that imperial servitude.

• Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was well punished for his blasphemy against learning, in the same kind wherein he offended; for when he was past threescore years old, he was taken with an extreme desire to go to school again, and to learn the Greek tongue, to the end to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well demonstrate that his former censure of the Grecian learning was rather an affected gravity, than according to the inward sense of his own opinion. And as for Virgil’s verses, though it pleased him to brave the world in taking to the Romans the art of empire, and leaving to others the arts of subjects, yet so much is manifest - that the Romans never ascended to that height of empire till the time they had ascended to the height of other arts. For in the time of the two first Cæsars, which had the art of government in greatest perfection, there lived the best poet, Virgilius Maro; the best historiographer, Titus Livius; the best antiquary, Marcus Varro; and the best or second orator, Marcus Cicero, that to the memory of man are known.

• Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning.

Antiquity

It suffices me to say, in general, that the diffidence of mankind in the soul has crept over the American mind; that men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought.
Yet, in every sane hour, the service of thought appears reasonable, the despotism of the senses insane. The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is a realist, and converses with things. For, the scholar is the student of the world, and of what worth the world is, and with what emphasis it accosts the soul of man, such is the worth, such the call of the scholar.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Literary Ethics."

It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar."

All inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he has satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by such a person as he, so armed and so motived, and to ends to which he himself should also have worked, the problem is solved; his thought lives along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, passes through them all with satisfaction, and they live again to the mind, or are now.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays: First Series/History."

Generals and proconsuls returned from the provinces loaded with spoils for themselves and the ruling class; millionaires multiplied; mobile money replaced land as the source or instrument of political power; rival factions competed in the wholesale purchase of candidates and votes; in 53 B.C. one group of voters received ten million sesterces for its support.62 When money failed, murder was available: citizens who had voted the wrong way were in some instances beaten close to death and their houses were set on fire. Antiquity had never known so rich, so powerful, and so corrupt a government.63 The aristocrats engaged Pompey to maintain their ascendancy; the commoners cast in their lot with Caesar; ordeal of battle replaced the auctioning of victory; Caesar won, and established a popular dictatorship. Aristocrats killed him, but ended by accepting the dictatorship of his grandnephew and stepson Augustus (27 B.C.). Democracy ended, monarchy was restored; the Platonic wheel had come full turn.

• Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Lessons of History. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2010. Ch 10, pg. 76.

The Church stooped to fraud, as with pious legends, bogus relics, and dubious miracles; for centuries it profited from a mythical "Donation of Constantine" that had allegedly bequeathed Western Europe to Pope Sylvester I (r. 314-35), and from "False Decretals" (c. 842) that forged a series of documents to give a sacred antiquity to papal omnipotence. More and more the hierarchy spent its energies in promoting orthodoxy rather than morality, and the Inquisition almost fatally disgraced the Church. Even while preaching peace the Church fomented religious wars in sixteenth-century France and the Thirty Years' War in seventeenth-century Germany. It played only a modest part in the outstanding advance of modern morality-the abolition of slavery. It allowed the philosophers to take the lead in the humanitarian movements that have alleviated the evils of our time.

• Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Lessons of History. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2010. Ch 7, pg. 45.

Even the great Varro errs in connecting 'ager' with 'ago' (as a place where work is done). Nor should etymology, even when sound in itself, induce you to tamper pedantically with the spelling accepted by the best writers. Antiquity and Authority demand our respect, for they carry with them a certain dignity of their own not to be lightly regarded. At the same time, nothing is worse in a young writer than affectation; beware, therefore, of the forced imitation of an older style, and abstain from introducing words and expressions, now obsolete, into speech whose cast is of today. As said Phavorinus to a pupil-you will find the anecdote in Aulus Gellius-'Copy the virtues of the great men of old, but let their archaisms die with them.' Speech should above all things be intelligible, and without pretension. Who would now use 'nox' as an ablative, or 'im' as an accusative for 'eum'? Yet the 'Twelve Tables' exhibit both.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De Liberorum Educatione, pg. 147-148.

Real may be distinguished from apparent solecisms by falling back upon four canons: Reason, Antiquity, Authority, Usage. By Reason we may mean, first, analogy, and analogy 'implies comparison of similars. So we compare a word whose use is doubtful with another, parallel in certain respects, whose use is definitely settled. Secondly, reason rests upon etymology, but neither derivation nor analogy may determine the form of a word in contradiction to fixed Usage; thus we do not say 'audaciter,' nor 'conire': and indeed analogy alone will often lead us astray, as we may see from the declension of 'domus.' Etymology is the enquiry into the origin of words...

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De Liberorum Educatione, pg. 147.

I come now to Poetry and the Poets--a subject with which every educated lady must shew her self thoroughly familiar. For we cannot point to any great mind of the past for whom the Poets had not a powerful attraction. Aristotle, in constantly quoting Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides and other poets, proves that he knew their works hardly less intimately than those of the philosophers. Plato, also, frequently appeals to them, and in this way covers them with his approval. If we turn to Cicero, we find him not content with quoting Ennius, Accius, and others of the Latins, but rendering poems from the Greek and employing them habitually. Seneca, the austere, not only abounds in poetical allusions, but was himself a poet; whilst the great Fathers of the Church, Jerome, Augustine, Lactantius and Boethius, reveal their acquaintance with the poets in their controversies and, indeed, in all their writings. Hence my view that familiarity with the great poets of antiquity is essential to any claim to true education.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Leonardo Bruni, De Studiis et Literis, pg. 128-129.

In the monuments of ancient literature which have come down to us History holds a position of great distinction. We specially prize such authors as Livy, Sallust and Curtius; and, perhaps even above these, Julius Caesar; the style of whose Commentaries, so elegant and so limpid, entitles them to our warm admiration. Such writers are fully within the comprehension of a studious lady. For, after all, History is an easy subject: there is nothing in its study subtle or complex. It consists in the narration of the simplest matters of fact which, once grasped, are readily retained in the memory. The great Orators of antiquity must by all means be included. Nowhere do we find the virtues more warmly extolled, the vices so fiercely decried. From them we may learn, also, how to express consolation, encouragement, dissuasion or advice. If the principles which orators set forth are portrayed for us by philosophers, it us from the former that we learn how to em ploy the emotions--such as indignation, or pity--in driving home their application in individual cases. Further, from oratory we derive our store of those elegant or striking turns of expression which are used with so much effect in literary compositions. Lastly, in oratory we find that wealth of vocabulary, that clear easy-flowing style, that verve and force, which are invaluable to us both in writing and in conversation.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Leonardo Bruni, De Studiis et Literis, pg. 128.

Were it necessary I might urge you by brilliant instances from antiquity: Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio, whose Epistles survived for centuries as models of style; Sappho, the poetess, held in so great honour for the exuberance of her poetic art; Aspasia, whose learning and eloquence made her not unworthy of the intimacy of Socrates. Upon these, the most distinguished of a long range of great names, I would have you fix your mind; for an intelligence such as your own can be satisfied with nothing less than the best.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Leonardo Bruni, De Studiis et Literis, pg. 123-124.

So, I repeat, it is of greatest importance that boys should be trained from childhood in feats of courage and endurance. The Lacedaemonian discipline was indeed severe. The boys were trained to be of such a temper that in their contests they could not yield nor confess themselves vanquished; the severest tests produced no cry of pain, though blood might flow and consciousness itself give way. The result was that all antiquity rehearses the deathless courage of the Spartans in the field; their arms were to them part of their very selves, to be cast away, or laid down, only with their lives. What else than this same early and most diligent training could have enabled the Romans to shew themselves so valiant, so enduring, in the campaigns they fought? Wherefore, whether a boy be trained in Arms or in Letters (for these are the two chief liberal Arts and fittest therefore for a prince), so soon as he be able to use his limbs let him be trained to Arms; so soon as he can rightly speak let him be trained to Letters. Further, it will be easy and it will be of great benefit to a boy to alternate the study of letters with bodily exercises; and, indeed, at whatever age he may be, the same practice is to be commended. Theodosius, we are told, spent the day in martial exercises, or in the business of the state; the evening he devoted to books.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Petrus Paulus Vergerius, De Ingenuis Moribus (c. 1404), pg. 113-114.

Profane language is to be held an abominable sin; and disrespect towards the ceremonies of the Church or vain swearing must be sternly repressed. Reverence towards elders and parents is an obligation closely akin. In this, antiquity offers us a beautiful illustration. For the youth of Rome used to escort the Senators, the Fathers of the City, to the Senate House; and awaiting them at the entrance, accompany them at the close of their deliberations on their return to their homes. In this the Romans saw an admirable training in endurance and in patience.

• Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Petrus Paulus Vergerius, De Ingenuis Moribus (c. 1404), pg. 100-101.

Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.

• William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (ed. 1993)

Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth.

• William Harvey, An anatomical dissertation upon the movement of the heart and blood in animals (ed. 1894).

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.

• William Hazlitt.

The Chronicle of Brute, in Spenser’s Fairy Queen, has a tolerable air of antiquity in it; so in the dramatic line, the Ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus, introduced as Prologue to Fulke Greville’s play of Mustapha, is reasonably far-fetched, and palpably obscure. A monk in the Popish Calendar, or even in the Canterbury Tales, is a more questionable and out-of-the-way personage than the Chiron of Achilles, or the priest in Homer. When Chaucer, in his Troilus and Cressida, makes the Trojan hero invoke the absence of light, in these two lines—
Why proffer’st thou light me for to sell?
Go sell it them that smallé seles grave!
he is guilty of an anachronism; or at least I much doubt whether there was such a profession as that of seal-engraver in the Trojan war. But the dimness of the objects and the quaintness of the allusion throw us farther back into the night of time, than the golden, glittering images of the Iliad.

• “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY XXIII ON ANTIQUITY.

Does not all we know relating to the site of old London-wall, and the first stones that were laid of this mighty metropolis, seem of a far older date (hid in the lap of ‘chaos and old night’) than the splendid and imposing details of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire?—Again, the early Italian pictures of Cimabue, Giotto, and Ghirlandaio are covered with the marks of unquestionable antiquity; while the Greek statues, done a thousand 255 years before them, shine in glossy, undiminished splendour, and flourish in immortal youth and beauty. The latter Grecian Gods, as we find them there represented, are to all appearance a race of modern fine gentlemen, who led the life of honour with their favourite mistresses of mortal or immortal mould,—were gallant, graceful, well-dressed, and well-spoken; whereas the Gothic deities long after, carved in horrid wood or misshapen stone, and worshipped in dreary waste or tangled forest, belong, in the mind’s heraldry, to almost as ancient a date as those elder and discarded Gods of the Pagan mythology, Ops, and Rhea and old Saturn,—those strange anomalies of earth and cloudy spirit, born of the elements and conscious will, and clothing themselves and all things with shape and formal being.

• “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY XXIII ON ANTIQUITY.

There is no such thing as Antiquity in the ordinary acceptation we affix to the term. Whatever is or has been, while it is passing, must be modern. The early ages may have been barbarous in themselves; but they have become ancient with the slow and silent lapse of successive generations. The ‘olden times’ are only such in reference to us. The past is rendered strange, mysterious, visionary, awful, from the great gap in time that parts us from it, and the long perspective of waning years. Things gone by and almost forgotten, look dim and dull, uncouth and quaint, from our ignorance of them, and the mutability of customs. But in their day—they were fresh, unimpaired, in full vigour, familiar, and glossy.

• “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY XXIII ON ANTIQUITY.

Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of antiquity, appear to have been cowards: nor does Horace seem to give a very favourable picture of his martial achievements. But in general there was not that division in the labours of the mind and body among the Greeks and Romans that has been introduced among us either by the progress of civilisation or by a greater slowness and inaptitude of parts.

• William Hazlitt, "Table-Talk/Volume 1/Essay 11." ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.

But in every thing which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her weakness or to be made conscious of her power;—wherever life and nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of antiquity and her heroic passions uniting, in the heart of the Poet, with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of sublimated humanity, which is at once a history of the remote past and a prophetic annunciation of the remotest future, there, the Poet must reconcile himself for a season to few and scattered hearers.

• "Poems (Wordsworth, 1815)/Volume 1/Essay."

Every part about you blasted with antiquity.

• King Henry the Fourth, I, ii, 210

So that eternal love in love's fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

• "Shakespeare's Sonnets (1883)/Sonnet 108."

But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee,— myself,— that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

• "Shakespeare's Sonnets (1883)/Sonnet 62."

The entire scientific and artistic movement of this peculiar centaur is bent, though with cyclopic slowness, upon bridging over the gulf between the ideal antiquity--which is perhaps only the magnificent blossoming of the Teutonic longing for the south—and the real antiquity; and thus classical philology pursues only the final end of its own being, which is the fusing together of primarily hostile impulses that have only forcibly been brought together. Let us talk as we will about the unattainability of this goal, and even designate the goal itself as an illogical pretension—the aspiration for it is very real; and I should like to try to make it clear by an example that the most significant steps of classical philology never lead away from the ideal antiquity, but to it; and that, just when people are speaking unwarrantably of the overthrow of sacred shrines, new and more worthy altars are being erected. Let us then examine the so-called Homeric question from this standpoint, a question the most important problem of which Schiller called a scholastic barbarism.
The important problem referred to is the question of the personality of Homer.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Homer and Classical Philology."

I will conclude this subject with remarking, that the fancied shortness of life is aided by the apprehension of a future state. The constantly directing our hopes and fears to a higher state of being beyond the present, necessarily brings death habitually before us, and defines the narrow limits within which we hold our frail existence, as mountains bound the horizon, and unavoidably draw our attention to it. This may be one reason among others why the fear of death was a less prominent feature in ancient times than it is at present; because the thoughts of it, and of a future state, were less frequently impressed on the mind by religion and morality. The greater progress of civilization and security in modern times has also considerably to do with our practical effeminacy; for though the old Pagans were not bound to think of death as a religious duty, they never could foresee when they should be compelled to submit to it, as a natural necessity, or accident of war, &c. They viewed death, therefore, with an eye of speculative indifference and practical resolution.

• “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY XXIII ON ANTIQUITY.

The Chronicle of Brute, in Spenser’s Fairy Queen, has a tolerable air of antiquity in it; so in the dramatic line, the Ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus, introduced as Prologue to Fulke Greville’s play of Mustapha, is reasonably far-fetched, and palpably obscure. A monk in the Popish Calendar, or even in the Canterbury Tales, is a more questionable and out-of-the-way personage than the Chiron of Achilles, or the priest in Homer. When Chaucer, in his Troilus and Cressida, makes the Trojan hero invoke the absence of light, in these two lines—
Why proffer’st thou light me for to sell?
Go sell it them that smallé seles grave!
he is guilty of an anachronism; or at least I much doubt whether there was such a profession as that of seal-engraver in the Trojan war. But the dimness of the objects and the quaintness of the allusion throw us farther back into the night of time, than the golden, glittering images of the Iliad.

• “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 7 of 12.” ESSAY XXIII ON ANTIQUITY.

1. On Duties, Book 1, Section 73.

2. On Painting. Penguin UK, 2005. pg. 34.

3. The Family in Renaissance Florence. Waveland Press, 1994. pg. 27.

4. Biographical and Autobiographical Writings. I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2023. pg. 265.

5. Hydriotaphia, Chapter V.

6. “Julius Caesar Scaliger: Epidorpides.” Epidorpidum. Book 1.

7. Ibid.

8. Act II, scene ii. - Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, (c. 1617; revised c. 1627–30; published 1639)

9. Cowley, Abraham. Poetry and Prose. L. C. Martin ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949.

10. The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam.

11. Arise O Cup- Bearer, Trans G. Bell (1897).

12. Letters to Various Persons (ed. 1865).

13. The Book of My Life. New York Review Books, 2002. Ch 23, pg. 82.

14. Cardanus Comforte (1574), Thomas Bedingfield's translation of De Consolatione (1542). Rendered into modern English by me.

15. Opera Omnia volume 1, Dialogue between Cardano and his father Fazio, pg. 638.

16. The Essays of Francis Bacon, Of Youth and Age, pg. 75.

17. Ulysses.

18. When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be.

19. John 21:25, KJV.

20. The Two Voices.

21. Poems: Second Series (Dickinson)/I have no life but this.

22. The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Pg. 23.

23. Ibid.

24. Essays, Moral and Political/Essay 14.

25. Vittorino Da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge University Press, 1897. Battista Guarino, De Ordine Docendi et Studendi, pg. 173.

26. Essays: First Series/Self-Reliance.

27. Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 33.

28. Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 33.

29. Essays (1580, ed. M. Rat, 1958) bk. 1, ch. 25.

30. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron 2 Vols (London: John Murrary, 1830), pp. 476-477.

31. Autobiography (Mill)/Chapter I.

32. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche (Portable Library) (p. 556). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

33. "Longfellow's Serenity and Poe's Prediction" (Exhibition at Boston Public Library and Massachusetts Historical Society). Forgotten Chapters of Boston's Literary History. The Trustees of Boston College. July 30, 2012. Retrieved May 22, 2012.

34. Rhymes (Michelangelo)/206.

35. Ulysses.

36. Deuteronomy 31:6.

37. Leonardo’s Notebooks: Writing and Art of the Great Master. Edited by H. Anna Suh, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013. Practical Advice, pg. 389.

38. Ibid.

39. Letter to Francesco Vettori (10 December 1513), as translated by James Atkinson, in Prince Machiavelli (1976), p. 19.

40. Day, Edward Parsons. Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, 1884.

41. Ibid.

42. Leonardo’s Notebooks: Writing and Art of the Great Master. Edited by H. Anna Suh, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013. Philosophy, Aphorisms, and Miscellaneous Writing, pg. 392.

43. An Essay on Man/Chapter 4.

44. Œnone.

45. Locksley Hall. Line 141.

46. In Memoriam. Prologue. Line 25.

47. The poetical works of Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate, etc: Complete in two volumes (ed. 1861).

48. The Laws, bk 1. Said by Marcus.

49. The Works of John Adams, vol. 4. Little, Brown, and Company, 1851, pp. 193-194.

50. Anonymous. The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. N.p., Outlook Verlag, 2023. Pg. 489.

51. The Federalist (Dawson)/50.

52. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster, 2007. Book 3, Ch 20, pg. 711.

53. Tatler (1709-1711), no. 147.

54. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, comp. by S. Austin Allibone. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1880.

55. At London’s Mitre Tavern on July 14, 1763, James Boswell's Life of Johnson.

56. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels: From the German of Goethe, Volume 2, translated by Thomas Carlyle, pg. 119.

57. Translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, #562 (p. 196).

58. Hamlet (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [323].

59. The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 3/Books.

60. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, comp. by S. Austin Allibone. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1880.

61. Day, Edward Parsons, Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, 1884.

62. Ibid.

63. Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

64. The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747).

65. Day, Edward Parsons, Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, 1884.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. Baron Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay. Lord Macaulay's Essays ; And, Lays of Ancient Rome. United Kingdom, G. Routledge and Sons, 1892. pg. 55.

69. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

70. Day, Edward Parsons, Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, 1884.