A cornucopia of elegant excerpts, a collectanea of passages, a florilegium of ideas, a gallimaufry of aperçus, musing flowers of yore, an anthologia of verse (a Parnassus), an omnium gatherum of etymologies and origins, all singled out carefully by hand.
Otto von Bismarck, quoted in: Emil Ludwig, Bismarck; The Story of a Fighter, (Blue Ribbon Books, 1927, reprinted 1934), tr. Eden and Cedar Paul, p. 67:
That which is imposing here on earth . . . is always akin to the fallen angel; who is beautiful, but lacks peace; is great in his plans and efforts, but never succeeds; is proud, and melancholy.
William Cowper, The Shrubbery, Written in a Time of Affliction:
O happy shades! to me unblest!
Friendly to peace, but not to me!
How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest, agree!
This glassy stream, that spreading pine,
Those alders quivering to the breeze,
Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine,
And please, if anything could please.
But fixed unalterable Care
Foregoes not what she feels within,
Shows the same sadness everywhere,
And slights the season and the scene.
For all that pleased in wood or lawn,
While Peace possessed these silent bowers,
Her animating smile withdrawn,
Has lost its beauties and its powers.
The saint or moralist should tread
This moss-grown alley, musing, slow;
They seek like me the secret shade,
But not, like me, to nourish woe!
Me fruitful scenes and prospects waste
Alike admonish not to roam;
These tell me of enjoyments past,
And those of sorrows yet to come.
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, pt. I., tr. Hans Hong and Edna Hong, (Princeton, 1987), The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama, p. 145:
. . . when the age loses the tragic, it gains despair. In the tragic there is implicit a sadness and a healing that one indeed must not disdain, and when someone wishes to gain himself in the superhuman way our age tries to do it, he loses himself and becomes comic. Every individual, however original he is, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family, of his friends, and only in them does he have his truth. If he wants to be the absolute in all this, his relativity, then he becomes ludicrous. In languages, there is sometimes found a word that because of its context is so frequently used in a specific case that it eventually becomes, if you please, independent as an adverb in this case. For the experts such a word has once and for all an accent and a flaw that it never lives down; if, then, this notwithstanding, it should claim to be a substantive and demand to be declined in all five cases, it would be genuinely comic. So it goes with the individual also when he, perhaps extracted from the womb of time laboriously enough, wants to be absolute in this enormous relativity. But if he surrenders this claim, is willing to be relative, then he eo ipso has the tragic, even if he were the happiest individual—indeed, I would say the individual is not happy until he has the tragic.
From a letter by Thomas Carlyle to Baillie/Jane Welsh, letter 101, 2 September, 1824:
The visions of eighteen are beautiful as the path of Aurora; but transient and baseless as they are beautiful. A little while and the glories of the East are clean gone; and after all, what matters it so much whether one fell gust of tempest or the silent march of the Hours have chased them away?
James Thomson, The Four Seasons, Spring:
And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song!
Form'd by the Graces, loveliness itself!
Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet,
Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul,
Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mix'd,
Shines lively fancy and the feeling heart:
Oh, come! and while the rosy-footed May
Steals blushing on, together let us tread
The morning dews, and gather in their prime
Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair,
And thy loved bosom that improves their sweets.
Al-Kindī, Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, tr. Peter Adamson and Peter Pormann, (Oxford, 2012), sect. 4, Ethics, Letter on the Method of how to Dispel Sorrows, pp. 254-5:
We should not content ourselves with being the most ignorant, most boorish, and most unjust people. Even if sadness were something necessary, then there would be sufficient sadness caused when the reason for sadness occurs. We ought not to anticipate it before it occurs. To experience it before it occurs is a kind of evil and malignancy. (6) Also, it is necessary not to experience it when it occurs before it is repelled. For it is harmful, as we [said] before. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to repel it, when it occurs. Whatever causes sadness is necessarily repelled by consolation after a while, if the sad person does not perish together with the sadness or shortly after the onset of sadness [i.e. if he does not die before being consoled]. (7) It is in the nature of sadness to disappear, for all things subject to coming-to-be also pass away and do not remain in [their] individual parts. We therefore ought to make every effort to alleviate and shorten the duration of the sorrow. If we shorten it <...while if we do not shorten it>, we shorten in others the repelling of the affliction that we can repel from ourselves. (8) This is characteristic for someone ignorant, wretched, boorish and unjust, for unjust is he who remains afflicted, and the most wretched is he who makes no effort to repel affliction from himself as best he can. We should not content ourselves with being wretched while we can be happy.
(1) A nice method for this is to remember the things which made us sad in the past, and from which we were consoled, as well as the things which made other people sad, whose sadness and consolation we have witnessed; and to see in our [present] state of sadness one of the saddening things of the past or one of the saddening thing which we perceived in other people, and the consolation which was brought about in the end. This gives us a great ability to console ourselves, as it did for instance in the case of Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedonia, who persuaded his mother to be steadfast when he was on his death-bed. (2) Among his writings we find the following letter to her: «O mother of Alexander, always bear in mind that everything subject to coming-to-be and passing-away is going to be obliterated, and that your son does not content himself with the manners of minor kings, nor should you be content for yourself, when he dies, with the manners of minor mothers of kings. Order a great city to be built when you receive the message about the death of Alexander, and send word that all the people of Libya, Europe and Asia should throng to you on a set day; and that on that day, they will gather in that city to eat, drink and be merry. Order it to be announced to them that no one should come to you who has been afflicted by a misfortune, in order that Alexander's funeral be celebrated joyfully and differently from the funerals of other people which take place in sadness.» (3) After she had given orders accordingly, nobody came to her at the appointed time. Then she said: «why do people stay away from us, even though we have previously [sent for them]?» It was said to her: «You ordered that no-one come to you who has [in the past] suffered from a misfortune, yet all people have suffered from misfortunes, therefore no one has come to you.« She said: «O Alexander, how similar are your last deeds to your first. You wanted to make me completely steadfast against my loss of you; for I am not the first to suffer from misfortunes, nor are they specific to any one human being.»
James Hinton, Love's Offering, 1883, LII., p. 130:
When I think sometimes that for years and years
New springs may clothe the hills in mocking green
And new blue skies with their high azure sheen
Gladden the hearts of men,—and that men's ears
May mark new love-songs woven of joy and tears
And all things else be just as they have been
Save only that thou are not here, my queen,—
I tremble with interminable fears.
That I should lose thee—thee my one delight,
while God keeps crowds of throstles at his ear,—
Thee my one lily, while God's lilies white
Are numberless and sweet and ever near
His throne,—my one star, while he has the night
Of stars,—great God, this seems too hard to bear!
A sonnet by Luís de Camões, Sin, tr. William Baer (Selected Sonnets, University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 46-47):
Happy is he whose only problem worth
complaining about is love’s audacious schemes,
since they alone can never destroy his dreams
of finding some contentment here on earth.
Happy is he who, far from home, embraces
nothing but his long-lost memories,
because when new problems arise, he sees
them clearly, comprehending the sorrow he faces.
And happy is he who lives in any state
where only fraud and love’s deceits and doubt,
are able to torture his heart from within.
But tragic is he who lives beneath the weight
of some unforgivable act, living without
consciousness of the damage of his sin.
Ditoso seja aquele que somente
se queixa de amorosas esquivanças;
pois por elas não perde as esperanças
de poder n’algum tempo ser contente.
Ditoso seja quem, estando absente,
não sente mais que a pena das lembranças;
porque inda que se tema de mudanças,
menos se teme a dor quando se sente.
Ditoso seja, enfim, qualquer estado
onde enganos, desprezos e isenção
trazem o coração atormentado.
Mas triste quem se sente magoado
de erros em que não pode haver perdão,
sem ficar n’alma a mágoa do pecado.
Egon Friedell, A Cultural History of the Modern Age, tr. Charles Francis Atkinson, Vol. I (1930; rpt. London: Vision Press, 1953), p. 147:
And most probably our century will seem as ghostly and unreal to a later age as the fourteenth century to us.
Goethe, as quoted in: Emil Ludwig, Goethe: The History of a Man, tr. Ethel Colburn Mayne (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1928), p. 136:
To live within limits, to want one thing, or a very few things, very much and love them very dearly, cling to them, survey them from every angle, become one with them—that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
Hippolyte Taine, A Tour Through the Pyrenees , tr. J. Safford Fiske (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1875), 149-51: This valley is solitar...
