The quotations below are a variety of adages, aphorisms, and allegories that I have come across in my reading and enjoyed for one reason or another. Some I think admirably illuminate human life. Some are merely pithy or witty summaries of positions I abhor. Some, perhaps, will have no virtue at all.
And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I am dead, shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a refuge unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but, holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast as their refuge to truth, shall not look for refuge to anyone besides themselves – it is they, Ananda, among my students, who shall reach the very topmost height!
-Buddha, Maha-Paranibbana Suttanta, passage 35, trans. T.W. Rhys Davids
Comments: This Buddhist passage recommends two laudable principles: steadfast devotion to truth, and self-reliance. The passage is further remarkable because it is one of the rare instances in history where a gifted prophet or king makes an effort to free his followers from their natural slavery to his own gifts. In other words, Buddha’s students have not had to think, because they had the teacher’s words; now he wishes them to achieve the strength not just to hear and understand his doctrines, but to internalize them, develop them, and pass them on. Ironically, Buddha’s students did exactly this, betaking themselves to no external refuge (like the written words of the teacher), relying on themselves, and transforming Buddhism into the Mahayana, which, though it must be evaluated on its own merits, is certainly a total corruption of Buddha’s original teaching.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see
All discord, harmony not understood,
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.
-Alexander Pope, “Essay on Man”
Comments: Pope’s poetry is excellent, his sentiment absurdly optimistic. It is representative of an entire school of thought that seeks to explain the problem of the presence of evil in a world created by a benevolent deity. The problem, according to Pope, is simply one of perspective.
Imagination cannot grasp the joy that reason draws from a fine-drawn line.
-Khwand Amir
Comments: So sayeth the poet, and he speaketh truly. Khwand Amir was probably talking about Kufic lettering, a form of calligraphy used in writing Korans. I am inclined to reverse the statement: reason cannot grasp the joy that imagination draws from a fine-drawn line. I, of course, am thinking of something else.
…[T]he air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Comments: What could I add to the words of the great novelist? The metaphor is pure perfection. Who cannot find some moment in his life that this quote has not perfectly captured?
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
-Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Comments: It’s rare that mere words can change history, and that these words did is reason enough to include them on this page. Marx’s bold thesis is laid out in its entire scope in these opening words to The Communist Manifesto. He manages to include examples covering the scope of all that was history up until the time of his writing, and his insight is not without merit. The inherent contradictions of communism aside, the historical insight is true. All of the civilizations that have come down through history as vessels of our modern heritage have been riven with class struggle. How it will end is open to debate, but Marx’s threat of a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large” was one of the mightiest threats a mere writer would bear out.
A miser is never satisfied with his money, nor a wise man with his knowledge.
-Pope Pius II
Comments: This pope was one of the Renaissance humanists, and he valued knowledge truly. He chose the name of “Pius” not because of the common mistranslation as “pious”, but because pius was the epithet applied to Aeneas in the Aeneid. The pope’s original name was Aeneas Sylvius. The quotation is a pithy reminder to always seek to know more.
[G]reat art must portray the general through the unique, as through Hamlet or Quixote, Oedipus or Panurge.
-Will Durant, The Reformation
Comments: An understanding of art and what constitutes it, and a developed appreciation of the great in art, is one of the most elusive elements in the modern intellect. Durant here provides a classical definition that the cultured man would do well to have at the tip of his tongue, for the education of the troglodytes.
The inexhaustible ingenuity of deviltry periodically compels a society to improve and reformulate its ways of protecting itself from violence, robbery, and deceit.
-Will Durant, The Age of Napoleon
Comments: Will Durant does Thomas Jefferson. (“The roots of the tree of Liberty…”) Durant is sometimes a conservative, and here is a staid phrasing of the need for change in terms even Burke could love.
I would be remiss in my duty… if I did not tell you… that the idea of… intercourse… and the fact of your firm young… body… comingling… with… withered flesh… sagging… breast-ts-ts… and flabby… buttocksss… makes me want… to vomit.
-Priest, Harold and Maude
Comments: This quotation is merely a friendly commentary for those who have seriously misjudged their compatibility with their romantic partners.
Let guilt or fear
Disturb man’s rest: Cato knows neither of them,
Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die.
-Joseph Addison, Cato V.i
Comments: This passage forms a reminder of what the highest source of happiness is: a clean conscience. In a clean conscience, in easy sleep, lie solace for so many of life’s worries and plagues. If we can do what is right, then we have done our best. The universe could be no better.
And He who draws us in these flashing days,
Whom we adore, though we know whom He slays,
He well may sorrow, for when we are gone,
He too will vanish in that selfsame blaze.
-Hafez of Shiraz
Comments: Ought not the greatest artists to be atheists? Hafez of Shiraz was among the greatest of Muslim poets, and lived during the greatest era of Persian history. Even in its golden age, though, Persia was a brutally repressive theocratic dictatorship, and Hafez had to cloak his beliefs in obscurity, and profess orthodoxy frequently. It is my lament that I must experience these lines in English, and can barely understand what they mean (except that God, too, is mortal, and relies on us for His existence).
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
-Francis Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles
Comments: This pithy phrase sums a round lashing that Bacon distributes to philosophers who have not been kings. His argument for a redistributive policy of taxation, more sensible even than Adam Smith’s, is that the concentration of wealth is a chief cause of social unrest. Practically speaking, a state will not be stable unless wealth is redistributed. It matters not whether it is just for a poor man to receive some of a rich man’s earnings; what matters is that, in fact, if the poor man does not, and many poor men do not over many years, the poor will rise up in revolt, and war and killing are just for no one. Therefore, though we may acknowledge the unfairness of confiscatory taxation in individual instances, we condone it nonetheless, as necessary to the stability of the state. Bacon’s thesis is powerful, but lamentable. If America is a romantic experiment, could not the universal application of individual justice be its most romantic goal?
One is, in proportion as one can love.
Fools are to be more feared than knaves.
To undeceive men is to offend them.
Extraordinary merit is a crime never forgiven.
There is a star which unites souls of the first order, though ages and distances divide them.
More courage is required for marriage than for war.
One rises above all, when one no longer esteems or fears anything.
He who loses his temper with the world has learned all he knows to no purpose.
Philosophy neither changes men nor corrects them.
-Christina, Queen of Sweden
Commentary: Herein is a surprising amount of wisdom for one who came to a throne at the tender age of eighteen. My favorites are the last two lines, which aptly sum up the value of learning. Who more qualified than a learned sovereign to say so? It is amazing how many times one can read over the calm majesty of Plato, and then step once more into the bustling world oppressed by trivialities. Six hours later update: “Philosophy neither changes men nor corrects them.” What a pearl of wisdom is this! What genius, what insight!
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunshine are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out.
When me they fly I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahman sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good,
Find me and turn thy back on heaven.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Brahma”
Comments: As Will Durant says, Emerson gives Hinduism a better expression than any Brahman could, at least to modern English ears. With the “sacred seven” Emerson appears to be referring to the Saptarshi.
It is unfortunate for mankind, fortunate for tyrants, that the poor and miserable do not have the instinct or pride of the elephant, who does not reproduce in captivity.
Sébastien Chamfort, Maximes
Comments: I have always thought race suicide was a great idea. I guess Chamfort’s policy would fail to weed out the most particularly repulsive specimens of humanity, though.
