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A few of my favorite quotes found on WS and beyond:

Aeschylus on Appearances

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Various authors have expressed the Greek maxim from Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

page 34

20

Esse quam videri.

To be rather than to seem.

 Latin version of the Greek maxim, found in Æschylus—Siege of Thebes.
21

Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum.

Do not hold everything as gold which shines like gold.

Alanus De Insulis—Parabolæ. (In Winchester College Hall-book of 1401-2.)
(See also Cervantes)

page 35

2

Habit maketh no monke, ne wearing of guilt spurs maketh no knight.

Chaucer—Testament of Love. Bk. II.
(See also Erasmus)
7

Cucullus (or Cuculla) non facit monachum.

The habit does not make the monk.

 Quoted by Erasmus.
(See also Chaucer, Henry VIII, Rabelais)


Aggrippa on Philosophy

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To him are ascribed the five tropes (πέντε τρόποι) which, according to Author:Sextus Empiricus, summarize the attitude of the later ancient sceptics. The first trope emphasizes the disagreement of philosophers on all fundamental points; knowledge comes either from the senses or from reason. Some thinkers hold that nothing is known but the things of sense; others that the things of reason alone are known; and so on. It follows that the only wise course is to be content with an attitude of indifference, neither to affirm nor to deny.

—Agrippa the Skeptic, "Agrippa" in EB1911

Described in Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus and Eduard Zeller's Outlines of the history of Greek philosophy (1895) (external scan), page 302

Archimedes on Change

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  • "Δος που στῶ, καὶ κοσμον κινησω" by Archimedes translated as "Give to whether or not, and the world moves". Better translation as "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth." translatum.gr Quoted by Shelley in Queen Mab on page 754.

Balmont, his unique Being

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Biography of Konstantin Balmont (born 1867):

(Balmont) is a veritable Narcissus of the ink-pot, to use a bon-mot of Fyodor Tyutchev's.

Like Ezra Pound, (Balmont) takes pleasure in flaunting an obscure linguistic erudition. His fecundity, one fears, has survived most of his other faculties.

Source: "Konstantin Balmont" in Modern Russian Poetry (1921) translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky

Brisson on Freedom

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Dire que la liberté n’est point par elle-même, qu’elle dépend d’une situation, d’une opportunité, c’est lui assigner une valeur négative. La liberté n’est pas dès qu’on la subordonne. Elle n’est pas un principe purement négatif, un simple élément de contrôle et de critique. Elle est le principe actif, créateur organisateur par excellence. Elle est le moteur et la règle, la source de toute vie, et le principe de l’ordre. Elle est, en un mot, le nom que prend la conscience souveraine, lorsque, se posant en face du monde social et politique, elle émerge du moi pour modeler les sociétés sur les données de la raison.
That freedom is not by itself, it depends on a situation, an opportunity is to assign a negative value. Freedom is not as soon as subordinates. It is not a purely negative principle, a single control element and criticism. She is an active principle, designer organizer par excellence. It is the engine and the rule, the source of all life, and the principle of order. It is, in a word, the name takes the sovereign conscience, when, posing in front of the social and political world, it emerges from me to shape societies on the information of reason.

French orginal on left and my English translation on right.

— Brisson, Revue Nationale, xxiii. 214.

Bryce on Truth

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  • "One duty that was always incumbent on the historian has now become a duty of deeper significance and stronger obligation. Truth, and Truth only, is our aim. We are bound as historians to examine and record facts without favor or affection to our own nation or to any other." Lord Bryce quoted by Adams in The Founding of New England.

Burke on Curiosity

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Bernis on Patience

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Canfield on Wit

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Through her highly amusing recital of how she had played on the prejudices of those provincials, how adroitly she had employed against them their very vices, their jealousy and suspicion of each other, their grasping avarice, their utter dumb-beast ignorance of what modern education meant, through all this played, like a little sulphurous flame, her acrid scorn and contempt for them, her vitriolic satisfaction in having cheated and beaten them, in having turned them inside out and made fools of them, without their ever once suspecting it.

Capel on Work

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Carlyle on Philistine

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[W]hen he [Christoph Friedrich Nicolai] wrote against [Immanuel] Kant's philosophy, without comprehending it; and judged of poetry as he judged of Brunswick mum, by its utility, many people thought him wrong. A man of such spiritual habilitudes is now by the Germans called a Philister, Philistine: Nicolai earned for himself the painful pre-eminence of being Erz-Philister, Arch-Philistine. [...] At present the literary Philistine seldom shows, never parades, himself in Germany; and when he does appear, he is in the last stage of emaciation.

Source: Thomas Carlyle (1824), "Goethe", in H. D. Traill, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels: Translated from the German of Goethe In Two Volumes, vol. I (centenary ed.), The Works of Thomas Carlyle, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 22. 

Catullus for Farewell

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Ave atque vale in Latin for "hail and farewell" by w:Catullus in Carmen 101, addressed to his deceased brother.

Source: w:List of Latin phrases (A) and by w:User:Antandrus for w:User talk:Jerome Kohl#In memoriam.

Cervants on Expectations

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w:Don Quixote#Tilting at windmills "English idiom that means attacking imaginary enemies." Don Quixote jousting with imaginary opponents

Chesterton on Journalism

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When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson;

Source: Chapter 8: The Mildness of the Yellow Press in Heretics by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Colletta on Guidance

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Italian English
I cieli han messo sulla terra due giudici delle umane azioni, la coscienza e la storia. The heavens have put two judges of human actions on the earth, conscience and history.

Colletta in Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1734 sino al 1825 (external scans (multiple parts): 1, 2) and quoted in Lord Acton's Lectures on Modern History on page 340.

Comte

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  • Il faut prendre son bien où on le trouve or "You have to take well where it occurs." from "Comte" article in EB1911 volume 6 page 815.
  • "In 1825 Comte married a Mdlle Caroline Massin. His marriage was one of those of which "magnanimity owes no account to prudence," and it did not turn out prosperously." from "Comte" article in EB1911 volume 6 page 815.
  • Il faut prendre son bien où on le trouve. to describe Comte - "Even if there were no such unmistakable expressions as these, the most cursory glance into Saint-Simon's writings is enough to reveal the thread of connexion between the ingenious visionary and the systematic thinker. We see the debt, and we also see that when it is stated at the highest possible, nothing has really been taken either from Comte's claims as a powerful original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over Saint-Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a degree of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as Molière and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In philosophy the conditions are not different." from "Comte" article in EB1911 volume 6 page 815.

Congreve on Character

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LORD FROTH, a solemn coxcomb,—Mr. Bowman.
BRISK, a pert coxcomb,—Mr. Powell.

—William Congreve , The Double Dealer/Dramatis Personæ in The Double Dealer

Curtis on Truth

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w:Charlotte Curtis columnist for New York Times was described by Tom Wolfe with clarity:

It wasn't anything (Curtis) wrote that infuriated them. It was that she put down exactly what they said. That's always what seems cruelest of all, to hold up a mirror to people that way.

—Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

"CHARLOTTE CURTIS, A COLUMNIST FOR THE TIMES, IS DEAD AT 58", New York Times, April 17, 1987

Dante on Knowledge

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Latin English
Considerate la vostra semenza:

fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

Consider your origin;

you were not born to live like a brute,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Davy on Opinions

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Consistency in regard to opinions is the slow poison of intellectual life – destroyer of its vividness and its energy.

—Sir Humphry Davy, The collected works or Sir Humphry Davy, Volume 1, page 68

Defoe on Riches

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He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing - viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

—Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, "Start in Life"

Dell on gushing

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Manche „Jubelcollagen“ hinterließen bei Dell gar den Eindruck, es handele sich um einen „Werbefilm“ für die Wikipedia.

—Matthias Dell, w:de:Das Wikipedia Versprechen – 20 Jahre Wissen für alle?

Translationed as jubilation collage.

Dickens on rage

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...worse spectacle than this—worse by far than fire and smoke, or even the rabble’s unappeasable and maniac rage.

—Charles Dickens,  Barnaby Rudge, Chapter 68

Dickinson on prayer

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I MEANT to have but modest needs, Such as content, and heaven; Within my income these could lie, And life and I keep even.

—Dickinson, "A Prayer"

Domestic Encyclopædia editors on torpor

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(Orpiment) may be ascertained by the following symptoms, whether any person has actually swallowed this drug: Shuddering, anxiety, tremor, violent nausea, and vomiting; an ardent sensation in the throat; fever; thirst; suppression of urine; costiveness; gnawing pain in the intestines; the face swells: while torpor and stupefaction close the cene.

"Orpiment" in Domestic Encyclopædia (1802), Volume III, page 317.

Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th Ed. editors on mendacious

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The name of the upas tree has become famous from the mendacious account (professedly by one Foersch, who was a surgeon at Samarang in 1773) published in the London Magazine, December 1783, and popularized by Erasmus Darwin in " Loves of the Plants " (Botanic Garden, pt. ii.). The tree was said to destroy all animal life within a radius of 15 miles or more. The poison was fetched by condemned malefactors, of whom scarcely two out of twenty returned. All this is pure fable, and in good part not even traditional fable, but mere invention.

"Upas" in EB, 9th Edition.

Forster on Mutual Endeavour

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I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems to do well enough, but it's no more like the real thing than money is like food. There's no nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call 'social intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour,' when it's mutual priggishness if it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see this. They say one ought to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice—

Source: Margaret Schlegel to Henry Wilcox. Written by E. M. Forster in Howards End, Chapter 17, page 155.

Gelehrte Anzeigen Editors on History

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Nur durch Irrthum kommen wir, der eine kürzeren und glücklicheren Schrittes, als der andere, zur Wahrheit; und die Geschichte darf nirgends diese Verirrungen übergehen, wenn sie Lehrein und Warnerin für die nachfolgenden Geschlechter werden will. It is only through error that we come, the one shorter and happier step than the other, to the truth; and history must not pass over these aberrations if it wants to become Lehrein and Warnerin for the following generations.

Lectures on Modern History page 335

Goethe on Awe

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Goethe in Wilhelm Meister

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The common problem which all men have to solve in the course of their lives is the reconciliation of the moral and the sensual, the ideal and the real, while art and perhaps religion are considered the means for attaining such a complete, harmonious personality. Man is to make himself a work of art which, independent of its surroundings, has its object exclusively in itself.

Source: "Wilhelm Meister" in The Encyclopedia Americana (1920).

Harding on Love

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  • L'âge ne vous protège pas des dangers de l'amour. Mais l'amour, dans une certaine mesure, vous protège des dangers de l'âge.

Source: Saint-Valentin - Amour, toujours - Citations », Jeanne Moreau, Direct Soir, nº 700, Vendredi 12 février 2010, p. 9 wikiquote:fr:Amour

History of France

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Dareste's general history of France was the best of its kind; it surpassed in accuracy the work of Henri Martin, especially in the ancient periods, just as Martin's in its turn was an improvement upon that of Sismondi.

Source: "Dareste de la Chavanne, Antoine Elisabeth Cléophas" in EB1911.

Huffer on Power

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blight of power-hungry intellectuals who do not fully understand the latent power and clear thinking of the working mass.

—Jack Gould, "TV Review; Eric Hoffer Interviewed by Severeid on C.B.S.", New York Times, 1967-09-20

Hugo on Excitement

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Victor Hugo, writing to Baudelaire, the poet, said,

Vous dotez le ciel de l’art d’un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau.

Source: "Baudelaire, Charles Pierre" in EB1911 on page 537

Roughly translated as "Give you a macabre ray of art in the sky, you create a new thrill."

Karr on Outlook

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Garson O’Toole of QuoteInvestigator researched this quote related to rose bushes. The meaning encourages one to have a positive outlook. The earliest reference was by Karr’s introductory comment which suggested an anonymous authorship:

De leur meilleur côté tâchons de voir les choses:
Vous vous plaignez de voir les rosiers épineux;
Moi je me réjouis et rends grâces aux dieux
Que les épines aient des roses.

Translation by O'Toole:

Let us try to see things from their better side:
You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes;
Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods
That thorns have roses.

Source: O’Toole, Garson. "16 Nov 2013". Quote Investigator.  with citation of Karr, Alphonse (1853), Lettres écrites de mon jardin, p. 293, <http://books.google.com/books?id=np0GAAAAQAAJ&q=%22aient+des%22#v=snippet&>. 

Kierkegaard on Hegel

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  • "it did not astound me that my shoemaker had found that (Hegel's logical trinity) could also be applied to the development of boots, since, as he observes, the dialectic, which is always the first stage in life, finds expression even here, however insignificant this may seem, in the squeaking," Kierkegaard's Journals IA 328 1836 or 1837 w:Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard#Kierkegaard and Hegel

Kochetov on Memoirs

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  • Vsevolod Kochetov criticized writers like Ilya Ehrenburg. He was quoted as saying "morose compilers of memoirs who look to the past...and . . . rake around the rubbish dump of their very fuddled memories" . See The Fellow-travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (1988) By David Caute, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300041958.

Maeterlinck Beyond Normal

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Law

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Orginal (Latin) Translation (English)
Eadem est ratio, eadem est, lex The reason being the same, the law is the same.

Source is unknown. Quote may come from Le elegie romane (1905) IA scan by Gabriele d'Annunzio. Please verify actual source.

Lawrence on Attraction

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Ursula had apprehended him with a fine FRISSON of attraction.

She knew it instantly. And instantly she perished in the keen FRISSON of anticipation

Source: Chapter XXVI: A Chair in Women in Love (1920) by D. H. Lawrence

Leibnitz on Power

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Original (Latin/French) Translation (English)
Caeteris paribus, on trouvera tousjours que ceux qui ont plus de puissance sont sujets à pécher davantage; et il n'y a point de théorème de géométrie qui soit plus asseuré que cette proposition. All else being equal, it will always be found that those who have more power are liable to sin more; And there is no theorem of geometry which is more important than this proposition.

Leslie

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  • "In an article in ‘Hermathena’ in 1876 ‘On the Philosophical Method of Political Economy’ he severely criticised the cardinal doctrines of the deductive economics, and ended by declaring the entire system to be ‘an idol of the tribe,’ owing its attractive simplicity and symmetry to its remoteness from actual fact." from Leslie, Thomas Edward Cliffe (DNB00)

Lowell on Poetry

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As with a hem! the queen of prudes
⁠Began her grave prelection.

...

Years after, when a poet asked
⁠The Goddess’s opinion,
As being one whose soul had basked
⁠In Art’s clear-aired dominion,—
“Discriminate,” she said, “betimes;
⁠The Muse is unforgiving;
Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
⁠Your morals in your living.”

"The Origin of Didactic Poetry" from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Number 1 (1857) by James Russell Lowell

Monty Python on Speech

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A sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus with a Hungarian tourist in Britain. The tourist unwittingly uses a Hungarian-to-English phrasebook to ask "Can I please buy some matches?" It is translated as "My hovercraft is full of eels." Spoken in Hungarian as:

Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal.

w:User:Michael Bednarek on w:User talk:Jerome Kohl#In memoriam where it was used in a humerous signature line.

Moore on Criticism

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"Du Cerceau's plate (Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France, vol. 2, plate 4) is incorrect, like most of his other plates, in giving the semicircular form to the openings of this façade."

-- Charles Herbert Moore in Character of Renaissance Architecture p. 190

Please help me understand what is incorrect?

Morley on Comte's Marriage

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  • "In 1825 Comte married a Mdlle Caroline Massin. His marriage was one of those of which “magnanimity owes no account to prudence,” and it did not turn out prosperously." by J. Mo. and X (Unnamed) in "Comte, Auguste" in 'EB1911.

The phrase "Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its motives." used by Morley in Aphorisms — an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887.

Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters

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Nietzsche

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  • "Geistreiche Schwiemelei" remarks by Ritschl on Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy was translated as "idea giddiness" in Friedrich Nietzsche by Curtis Cate; translated as "ingenious inebriation" in Nietzsche Chronical 1872; translated by Silk and Stern as "ingenious dissipation" in Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius by Carl Pletsch page 236; "clever giddiness" in Nietzsche as Philosopher by Arthur Danto.
  • "O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in 'the truth,' and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely--« il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien »--I wager he finds nothing!" from "Aphorism 35." in Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter II - The Free Spirit.
Editor's note: Translate the French phrase "il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien" as "one only seeks the true to do good."

Ogilvie on torpor

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Emigrating to America, he for some time conducted a classical academy in Richmond, Virginia, leaving the impression of being 'a man of singular endowments,' gifted with the power of rousing the mind from its torpor and lending it wings' (Southern Literary Messenger, vol. xiv.)

—Ogilvie, "Ogilvie, James" in DNB, Volume 42, page 18"

Pasteur on Chance

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  • Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés. In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. by Louis Pasteur in Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854). See q:Louis Pasteur.

Pool on Puritans

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  • "In New England, in their religious persecutions and Indian wars, the sayings of Christ never prevailed to stay their hands or to save the blood of their victims." with footnote "This did not, however, imply any love for living Jews." D. de Sola Pool, “Hebrew Learning among the Puritans of New England prior to 1700,” in American Jewish Historical Society Publications, vol. XX, p. 57.JSTOR quoted in The Founding of New England, Book IV

Pindar on Becoming

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Priestley on History

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  • "To facilitate the advancement of all the branches of useful science, two things seem to be principally requisite. The first is, an historical account of their rise, progress, and present state. Without the former of these helps, a person every way qualified for extending the bounds of science labours under great disadvantages; wanting the lights which have been struck out by others, and perpetually running the risk of losing his labour, and finding himself anticipated. " Priestley page 338 from Lectures on Modern History

Proudhon on Government

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  • "The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the prudence of statesmen" - Proudhon

Publilius Syrus on Justice

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  • From Edinburgh Review, the Latin saying by Syrus:
"Judex damnatur, cum nocens absolvitur."
"The judge is condemned, when the criminal is acquitted."

from The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Slave on page iii.

Pushkin on Dreaming

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  • "Upon the brink of the wild stream
He stood, and dreamt a mighty dream."
The Bronze Horseman (1833) by Pushkin trans. Charles Johnston.

Quarrel

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  • "querelle d'Allemand" French for quarrel without a subject

Roscher's Erudition

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  • Wilhelm Roscher's "Principles of Political Economy is a book of inexhaustible erudition, such as a plodding and untiring German Professor alone could produce." Book review by editors in PSM Vol 15, June 1879, Literary Notices, page 278.
Note: Original work being reviewed, page scans at (external scan)

Rousseau on Freedom

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  • L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers. Tel se croit le maître des autres, qui ne laisse pas d’être plus esclave qu’eux. "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they." Rousseau in Of The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right (Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique) (1762). See more at q:The Social Contract.

Russell on Truth and Philosophy

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  • "Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realised the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy" Bertrand Russell in The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Chapter 1, page 9.

Saint Exupéry on Perfection

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Terre des Hommes (1939)
French English
Variant translation of: Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher. It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

Source: "Ch. III: L'Avion" in Terre des Hommes (1939) by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, translated into English as Wind, Sand and Stars (1939) by Lewis Galantière in "Ch. III : The Tool"

Shakespeare on War

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Shelley on Power

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stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

—Shelley, Ozymandias

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject not the citizen: for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.

- by Percy Bysshe Shelley in Queen Mab (1821), Canto III page 29.

Santayana on Mind

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Greek English (Translation)
ἡ γὰρ νοὒ ἐνέρργεια ζωή "The since??? mind activity of life" or "for hope mind energic life."

from THE LIFE OF REASON, Book 1 Reason in Common Sense by Santayana

Schiller on Hope

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Ich bringe Blumen mit und Früchte,
Gereift auf einer anderen Flur,
In einem andern Sonnenlichte,
In einer glucklichern Natur

I bring flowers and fruits with me,
Ripened in another corridor,
In another sunlight,
In a happier nature

Source: by Schiller in A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields

Schmoller on Political Economy

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  • La Revue de Paris page 67 by Jean Breton quotes in Lectures on Modern History by Lord Acton page 337:
Original in French My English Translation
Schmoller, moins dogmatique et mettant comnie une sorte de coquetterie à être incertain, démontre, par les faits, la fausseté ou l'arbitraire de tous ces postulats, et laisse l'économie politique se dissoudre dans l'histoire.  Schmoller, less dogmatic and with a sort of coquetry to be uncertain, demonstrates, by the facts, the falsity or arbitrariness of all these postulates, and allows political economy to dissolve in history.

Scold

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scold

Sedley on Wit

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(Sedley's) bon mot at the expense of James II. is well known. The king had seduced his daughter and created her countess of Dorchester, whereupon Sedley remarked that he hated ingratitude, and, as the king had made his daughter a countess, he would endeavour to make the king's daughter a queen.

His only child, Catherine Sedley (c. 1657-1717).

Source: "Sedley, Sir Charles" in Encyclopædia Britannica (1911)

Swinburn on Revenge

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(Swinburn) had a diabolical cleverness in tormenting Furnival, and he knew how to hint the exact charge which would excite that unfortunate man to frenzy.

Source: Gosse, Edmund (1917), The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, pp. 249-250, <https://archive.org/details/lifealgernoncha01gossgoog/page/n278/mode/2up>. 

Teasdale on torpor

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We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,—
The warm millions, moving under the roofs,
Consumed by their own desires;
Preparing food,
Sobbing alone in a garret,
With burning eyes bending over a needle,
Aimlessly reading the evening paper,
Dancing in the naked light of the café,
Laying out the dead,
Bringing a child to birth—
The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy
Come up to us
Like a cold fog wrapping us round.

—Teasdale, "From the Woolworth Tower" in Rivers to the Sea, p. 14

Tennyson on Curse

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"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Source: The Lady of Shalott (1842), Pt. III, st. 5A

Tertullian on Poems

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these versifications, which are “poems” only as mules are horses

Source: translator Sydney Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV, Tertullian: Part Fourth, Appendix: Elucidations

Tertullian on Wit

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(Tertullian's) famous saying, Certum est quia impossibile est. It occurs in the tract De Carne Christi, and is one of those startling epigrammatic dicta of our author which is no more to be pressed in argument than any other bon-mot of a wit or a poet.

Source: translator Sydney Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV, Tertullian: Part Fourth, Appendix: Elucidations


Tertullian was considered one of the most staunch apologists until he chose to follow a popular heresy.

Source: Author: Tertullian

Tolstoy on Happiness

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  • “I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?"”; Leo Tolstoy, "Part 1" from Family Happiness
  • "I wish to be cool, but then this coolness seems overdone and I become too affable" from A History of Yesterday. Notes to be used for a story. Scene takes place while playing cards with a young coquette woman. Russian title Istoriya vcherashnego dnya (1851)

Trosne on Public Opinion

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Italian English
È l'opinione pubblica, piuttosto che la ragione, che generalmente governa gli uomini. Se si getta un colpo d'occhio sulla storia morale delle nazioni, si vedrà che non vi è nessuna opinione tanto falsa, e anche tanto assurda e barbara, che non sia stata seguita da interi popoli; che non vi è nulla di cui l'uomo non sia capace quando l'opinione pubblica lo esige. It is public opinion, rather than reason, which generally governs men. If one glances at the moral history of nations, one will see that there is no opinion so false, and even so absurd and barbaric, which has not been followed by entire peoples; that there is nothing of which man is not capable when public opinion demands it.

Guillaume Le Trosne from Wikiquote: wikiquote:it:Guillaume Le Trosne and w:it:Guillaume Le Trosne from De l'ordre social, (1777) Paris, p. 295; citato in Miglio 2001, p. XXVII. page 295 from scan at BEIC.

Turkish Folklore on A Look

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  • "When the Bedouin horses nicker on seeing their master;"
Legend I: The Story of Bugach Khan, Son of Dirse Khan from Book of Dede Korkut
  • nicker means "A soft neighing sound characteristic of a horse." or "A suppressed laugh." Source: wiktionary:nicker

Tyutchev on Ego

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Gorchakov, a conspicuous figure in government, from 1856 occupying the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. He replaced the Austrophil, Count K. Nesselrode (1780-1862). While Tyutchev considered it his duty to support the nationalist motives behind Gorchakov's policies, to which numerous letters and verses bear witness, nonetheless he caustically mocked the man's ambition and self-love, calling him "the narcissus of his own inkwell". Gorchakov was inordinately proud of his prose style. His vanity even came to the attention of Bismarck, who once remarked that Gorchakov was "incapable of stepping over a puddle without examining his own reflection in it". (C:7/43)

Source: Tyutche's letter (#280) in 1864 addressed to Prince Alexander Gorchakov (1798-1883). From "Knyazyu Gorchakovu (vam vypalo prizvan'e rokovoe)/To Prince Gorchakov (Yours has been a fateful calling)", Complete Poems Poems of Tyutchev In An English, p. 188, <https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/001/241/1.htm>. 

Narcissus of the ink-pot a bon-mot of Fyodor Tyutchev. See usage above under Belmont.

Voltaire on Power

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  • Écrasez l'infâme. "crush the persecuting and privileged orthodoxy" or "crush the infamous thing (superstition)" (a) Voltaire quoted by Shelley in "Queen Mab" on page 754, (b) further explained in article "Voltaire" from EB1911. (c) Joseph MacCabe explained this as "the battle-cry which he sent over Europe from the Swiss frontier, was but a fiery expression of his love of men, of liberty, of enlightenment, and of progress. Read the stories of brutality in the guise of religion that are told in these pages" from "Introduction" page ix of Toleration and other essays (1912).
  • Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles translated as "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." claimed by Professor Pangloss character in Candide by Voltaire. He satirized naïve interpretations of the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz.

Way on Translation

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between various disputed readings and interpretations. He will probably, ceteris paribus, choose those which seem best adapted for poetic treatment

—Way, "Preface 3" to Tragedies of Euripides Volume 3

Way filled his pages with footnotes.

Wolowski on History

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  • "History preserves the student from being led astray by a too servile adherence to any system." — Wolowski Lectures on Modern History by Lord Acton page 337

Yogi Bear Friends on Despair

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"Heavens to Murgatroyd" (replacement for "heavens to Betsy") or "cursed Murgatroyd". Related to Ruddigore or, The Witch's Curse, comic opera with music by Sullivan and Gilbert?

Zittel on Dictates

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From 2019 interview in A Modern Matter:

the difference between a ‘dictate’ (or demand) and a limitation (or restriction). I actually see a dictates as being much more oppressive than limitations. Right now I’m in the process of trying to stop creating dictates for myself because no matter how useful they may seem — they always end up making me crazy

Walsh, Brienne (2019-06-01). "A Conversation with Andrea Zittel:A Conversation With the Greatest Female Artist West of the Rocky Mountains". Modern Matter. 

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