Æqua lege necessitas
Sortitur insignes et imos.
Necessity takes impartially the highest and the lowest.
Necessitas ultimum et maximum telum est.
Necessity is the last and strongest weapon.
Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,
Et quantum natura petat.
Learn on how little man may live, and how small a portion nature requires.
So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deed.
Cest une violente maistresse d'eschole que la necessité.
Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
My steps have pressed the flowers,
That to the Muses' bowers
The eternal dews of Helicon have given:
And trod the mountain height,
Where Science, young and bright,
Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven.
Yet have I found no power to vie
With thine, severe necessity!
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem.
He who would eat the kernel, must crack the shell.
Plautus—Curculio. I. 1. 55.
Efficacior omni arte imminens necessitas.
Necessity when threatening is more powerful than device of man.
Quintus Cuktius Rufus—De Rebus Gestis
Alexandri Magni. IV. 3. 23.
Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit.
Necessity makes even the timid brave.
Sallust—Catilina. 58.
it
Ernst ist der Anblick der Nothwendigkeit.
Stern is the visage of necessity.
Schiller—Wallenstein's Tod. I. 4. 45.
It is in these useless and superfluous things
that I am rich and happy.
Scopas. In Plutarch's Life of Cato.
| seealso = (See also Voltaire)
Necessity—thou best of peacemakers,
As well as surest prompter of invention.
Scott—Peveril of the Peak. Heading of Ch. XXVI.
| seealso = (See also Franck)
| topic = Necessity
| page = 551
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = Malum est necessitati vivere; sed in necessitate vivere necessitas nulla est.
| trans = It is bad to live for necessity; but there is no necessity to live in necessity.
| author = Seneca
| work = Epistles.
| place = 58.
| topic = Necessity
| page = 551
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num = 15
| text = <poem>Now sit we close about this taper here,
And call in question our necessities.
Necessity's sharp pinch!
King Lear. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 214.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Richard II. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 277. '
| seealso = (See also Hadrianus)
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
Troilus and Cressida. Act III. Sc. 3. L.
230.
Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power!
Necessity, thou mother of the world!
Shelley—Queen Mah. Pt. VI.
Sheer necessity—the proper parent of an art
so nearly allied to invention.
Sheridan—The Critic. Act I. Sc. 2.
| seealso = (See also {{sc|Franck)
The gods do not fight against necessity.
Simonides. 3. 20.
Nede hath no lawe.
Skelton—Colyn Cloute. L. 865. Langland
—Piers Ploughman. Passus. 23. L. 10.
| seealso = (See also Cromwell, Syrus)
| topic = Necessity
| page = 551
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the
less a man needs the nearer does he approach
divinity.
Socrates. Quoted by Xenophon—Mem.
Bk. I. 6. 10.
A wise man never refuses anything to necessity.
Necessity knows no law except to conquer.
Le superflu, chose tres necessaire.
The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain
And Fear and Bloodshed,—miserable train!—
Turns his necessity to glorious gain.
Necessity, the mother of invention.
