The Unchanging Human Heart

Emil Ludwig, Gifts of Life: A Retrospect, (Little, Brown, and Company, 1931) edt. Ethel Colburn Mayne, Preface, v.:

The lesson of all memoirs is that the human heart is unchanging, throughout all ages, classes, and varieties of opinion. 

Limits Of Language Before Nature And Before Geniuses

William White, Life of Emanuel Swedenborg, (Philadelphia, 1866), Intro. (writ by B. F. Barrett), pp. 7-8:

It is difficult to paint in language the grandest scenes in nature. To him who essays it, words seem powerless and wholly unequal to the task of conveying an adequate description. Any one who has stood by the side of Niagara, and listened to its deafening roar, and felt the grandeur and inspiration of the scene, is never quite satisfied with any written or oral description of that mighty cataract. And the reason is plain. It is not in the power of language, however skilfully employed, to kindle such emotions in the soul as are awakened by the scene itself.

The case is similar in regard to all great geniuses, and especially great authors. It is not easy to describe the loftiest human souls, or adequately to paint their characters in words. And those who are most familiar with their writings, are usually least satisfied with their biographies however vigorously or gracefully written. It is with the most gifted thinkers and writers as with the great Author of the volume of nature; they are best seen and understood in their works. And in any biographies wherein it is attempted to show us such men apart from, or outside of, their writings, it can hardly be otherwise than that they should appear considerably dwarfed. We miss those grand and symmetrical features which reveal themselves on every page of their works, but are to be truly seen no where else.

Wisdom And The Prime Of Life

Philo Alexandrinus, Every Good Man Is Free (Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit), In: vol. IX. of Philo's works, (Loeb Classical Library, 1985), tr. F. H. Colson,  II, 13-15, pp. 17-19:

But since we have it on the sacred authority of Plato [Phædrus, 247A] that envy has no place in the divine choir, and wisdom is most divine and most free-handed, she never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself. Then when like initiates in the mysteries they have taken their fill of the revelations, they reproach themselves greatly for their former neglect and feel that they have wasted their time and that their life while they lacked wisdom was not worth the living. It is well then that the young, all of them and everywhere, should dedicate the first fruits of the flower of their prime above all else to culture, wherein it is good for both youth and old age to dwell. . . .

That Friendship Is indispensable

Cicero, Lælius De Amicitia, 23 (tr. William Armistead Falconer):

Nay, even if anyone were of a nature so savage and fierce as to shun and loathe the society of men—such, for example, as tradition tells us a certain Timon of Athens once was—yet even such a man could not refrain from seeking some person before whom he might pour out the venom of his embittered soul. Moreover, the view just expressed might best be appraised if such a thing as this could happen: suppose that a god should remove us from these haunts of men and put us in some solitary place, and, while providing us there in plenteous abundance with all material things for which our nature yearns, should take from us altogether the power to gaze upon our fellow men—who would be such a man of iron as to be able to endure that sort of a life? And who is there from whom solitude would not snatch the enjoyment of every pleasure? True, therefore, is that celebrated saying of Archytas of Tarentum, I think it was—a saying which I have heard repeated by our old men who in their turn heard it from their elders. It is to this effect: «If a man should ascend alone into heaven and behold clearly the structure of the universe and the beauty of the stars, there would be no pleasure for him in the awe-inspiring sight, which would have filled him with delight if he had had someone to whom he could describe what he had seen.» Thus nature, loving nothing solitary, always strives for some sort of support, and man's best support is a very dear friend.

Quin etiam si quis asperitate ea est et inmanitate naturae, congressus ut hominum fugiat atque oderit, qualem fuisse Athenis Timonem nescio quem accepimus, tamen is pati non possit, ut non anquirat aliquem, apud quem evomat virus acerbitatis suae. Atque hoc maxime iudicaretur, si quid tale posset contingere, ut aliquis nos deus ex hac hominum frequentia tolleret et in solitudine uspiam collocaret atque ibi suppeditans omnium rerum, quas natura desiderat, abundantiam et copiam hominis omnino aspiciendi potestatem eriperet. Quis tam esset ferreus, qui eam vitam ferre posset, cuique non auferret fructum voluptatum omnium solitudo? Verum ergo illud est, quod a Tarentino Archyta, ut opinor, dici solitum nostros senes commemorare audivi ab aliis senibus auditum: «si quis in caelum ascendisset naturamque mundi et pulchritudinem siderum perspexisset, insuavem illam admirationem ei fore; quae iucundissima fuisset, si aliquem, cui narraret, habuisset.» Sic natura solitarium nihil amat semperque ad aliquod tamquam adminiculum adnititur; quod in amicissimo quoque dulcissimum est.

The New Gospel

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, pt. 1, ch. 2, §107, tr. Helen Zimmern:

. . . To recognise all this may be deeply painful, but consolation comes after; such pains are the pangs of birth. The butterfly wants to break through its chrysalis: it rends and tears it, and is then blinded and confused by the unaccustomed light, the kingdom of liberty. In such people as are capable of such sadness—and how few are!—the first experiment made is to see whether mankind can change itself from a moral into a wise mankind. The sun of a new gospel throws its rays upon the highest point in the soul of each single individual, then the mists gather thicker than ever, and the brightest light and the dreariest shadow lie side by side. Everything is necessity—so says the new knowledge, and this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is innocence, and knowledge is the road to insight into this innocence. Are pleasure, egoism, vanity necessary for the production of the moral phenomena and their highest result, the sense for truth and justice in knowledge; were error and the confusion of the imagination the only means through which mankind could raise itself gradually to this degree of self-enlightenment and self-liberation—who would dare to undervalue these means? Who would dare to be sad if he perceived the goal to which those roads led? Everything in the domain of morality has evolved, is changeable, unstable, everything is dissolved, it is true; but everything is also streaming towards one goal. Even if the inherited habit of erroneous valuation, love and hatred, continue to reign in us, yet under the influence of growing knowledge it will become weaker; a new habit, that of comprehension, of not loving, not hating, of overlooking, is gradually implanting itself in us upon the same ground, and in thousands of years will perhaps be powerful enough to give humanity the strength to produce wise, innocent (consciously innocent) men, as it now produces unwise, guilt-conscious men,—that is the necessary preliminary step, not its opposite.

New Discoveries

W. Byrd Powell, The Natural History of the Human Temperaments, (Cincinnati, 1856), Preface, p. vii.:

It is well known that all new discoveries have to contend with the vanity of some, the selfishness of others, and the incredulity and ignorance of many. 

Regarding Our Predecessors

A. E. Housman, The Confines of Criticism (Cambridge: University Press, 1969), pp. 44-45:

I spoke just now of servility shown towards the living; and I think it significant that this is so often found in company with lack of due veneration towards the dead. My counsel is to invert this attitude, and to think more of the dead than of the living. The dead have at any rate endured a test to which the living have not yet been subjected. If a man, fifty or a hundred years after his death, is still remembered and accounted a great man, there is a presumption in his favour which no living man can claim; and experience has taught me that it is no mere presumption. It is the dead and not the living who have most advanced our learning and science; and though their knowledge may have been superseded, there is no supersession of reason and intelligence. Clear wits and right thinking are essentially neither of today nor yesterday, but historically they are rather of yesterday than of today: and to study the greatest of scholars of the past is to enjoy intercourse with superior minds. If our conception of scholarship and our methods of procedure are at variance with theirs, it is not indeed a certainty or a necessity that we are wrong, but it is a good working hypothesis; and we had better not abandon it until it proves untenable. Let us not disregard our contemporaries, but let us regard our predecessors more; let us be most encouraged by their agreement, and most disquieted by their dissent.

Regarding Love's Place In Life

S. S. Knight, Human Life, 1910, ch, vii., Love, pp. 156-8:

It is owing to the fact that we cannot enjoy anything to the fullest extent alone, since our nature is so constituted that we must have company in our pleasures, that friends are indispensable. Cicero realized this over two thousand years ago when he said that, “The fruit of talent, and worth, and every excellence, is gathered most fully when it is bestowed upon every one most nearly connected with us.” Appreciating this, nature has given us the love and friendship of parents in our childhood; of the companions of our youth as we grow older; of our life-partner at a later period, and last, the love of our children and grandchildren, so that, by an interest in their lives, we may become ourselves rejuvenated. In this, as in everything else of a physical or mental character, we start at the bottom, and, by a crescendo movement, reach the acme of the condition which with age diminishes, but in this instance the quality does not deteriorate. Our likelihood of forming acquaintances and friends in later years is very much less than in youth, and, certainly, with our habits and idiosyncrasies established, as they are after middle age, the possibility of forming intimate friendships is very much decreased. In childhood and youth, we are more imaginative and less practical, and, consequently, our inclinations in the line of friendships will be more natural and less influenced by considerations alien to friendship itself. Nothing can be more true than the axiom of Cicero, “Friendship does not follow upon advantage, but advantage upon friendship.” Clearly demonstrated as this is, but few people seem to realize it. For the fundamental truth at the bottom of this matter is, as he further states, “the basis of that steadfastness and constancy which we seek in friendship is sincerity. For nothing is enduring which is insincere.”

The Judgment of Enlightened Peoples

Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments From the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley, Spring 1884, §25 [67]:

Enlightened peoples are worse judges of people and things: the cause of this is their présomption.

Serendipity

Leo A. Goodman, Notes on the Etymology of Serendipity and Some Related Philological Observations, in: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 5 (May, 1961), p. 457:

The adventure of the three princes of Serendip, as described in the English version or in the De Mailli rendering and as referred to in Walpole's letter of 1754, the corresponding events in Voltaire's novel and in the Talmudic tale, the instance of Lord Shaftsbury's «accidental sagacity» described in Walpole's letter, all would suggest a meaning for Walpole's serendipity somewhat different from what now appears to be its present usage. E. Solly's definition in 1880, «looking for one thing and finding another,» is also somewhat different from present usage. At present serendipity usually means «the knack of spotting and exploiting good things encountered accidentally while searching for something else,» exemplified by «research directed toward the test of one hypothesis [yielding] a fortuitous b-product, an unexpected observation which bears upon theories not in question when the research was begun.»

The Vulgar

Friedrich von Schiller, from his Preface to the first edition of The Robbers, 1781:

The vulgar—among whom I would not be understood to mean merely the rabble—the vulgar, I say (between ourselves), extend their influence far around, and unfortunately—set the fashion. . . . Let as many friends of truth as you will, instruct their fellow-citizens in the pulpit and on the stage, the vulgar will never cease to be vulgar, though the sun and the moon may change their course, and «heaven and earth wax old as a garment».

Hiding The Shameful

Isocrates, Orations, To Demonicus, 15-16 (tr. Geroge Norlin):

Whatever is shameful to do you must not consider it honourable even to mention. Accustom yourself to be, not of a stern, but of a thoughtful, mien; for through the former you will be thought self-willed, through the latter, intelligent. Consider that no adornment so becomes you as modesty, justice, and self-control; for these are the virtues by which, as all men are agreed, the character of the young is held in restraint.

Never hope to conceal any shameful thing which you have done; for even if you do conceal it from others, your own heart will know.

Knowing One's Limits

Nicolas de Chamfort, tr. William G. Hutchison, in: The Cynic's Breviary, 1902:

“Are you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you can?” said Seneca to one of his sons who could not work out the exordium of an oration he was composing. One might say the same to those who adopt principles stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?”

Society, Nature, And Books Of Natural History

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1841, December 31:

In society you will not find health, but in nature. You must converse much with the field and woods, if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body. Society is always diseased, and the best is the sickest. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as that of everlasting in high pastures. Without that our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. 

I should like to keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which would restore the tone of my system and secure me true and cheerful views of life. For to the sick, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To the soul that contemplates some trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political servitude, no priestcraft nor tyranny, was ever [sic] taught by such as drank in the harmony of nature.

Two Kinds Of Nakedness

Philo of Alexandria, Questions and Answers on Genesis, bk. II., 69 (tr. C. D. Yonge):

This is praise of the wise man both in the literal sense of the words, and also in their hidden meaning, that his exhibition of nakedness took place not out of doors but in his house, being concealed by the roof and walls of his house.  For the nakedness of the body is concealed by a house which is made of stones and beams of wood; but the covering and clothing of the soul is the discipline of wisdom.  Therefore there are two kinds of nakedness, one which takes place by accident, which is the result of an involuntary offence, because the just man, using, if I may say so, his honesty as if it were a garment with which he is clothed, stumbles out of his own accord like men who are intoxicated, or who are afflicted with insanity.  For in such men their offences are not deliberately committed; but it is his task and pleasing duty to clothe himself, as with a garment, with the discipline and honesty of study.

There is also another kind of nakedness of the soul which is caused by perfect virtue, which expels from itself the whole carnal weight of the body, as if it were flying from a tomb, as indeed it has long been buried in it as in a tomb.  As also it avoids pleasures, and also a great number of miseries arising from the different passions and many anxieties arising from misfortunes, and indeed all the evil effects of these different circumstances.  He, therefore, who has been able with distinction to pass through such various and great dangers, and to escape such injuries, and to emancipate himself from such evils, has attained to the destiny of happiness, without any stain or disgrace.  For I should pronounce this to be the ornament and badge of beauty in those individuals who have been rendered worthy to pass their existence in an incorporeal manner.

See also Ralph Marcus' fine transaltion.  

Claimed Pleasures Of Idleness

George Borrow, Lavengro, chapter XIV:

I have heard talk of the pleasures of idleness, yet it is my own firm belief that no one ever yet took pleasure in it. Mere idleness is the most disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are continually making efforts to escape from it. It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness. There are many tasks and occupations which a man is unwilling to perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books and school?

That For Love Nothing Is Impossible

Maximus Tyrius, The Dissertations, tr. Thomas Taylor, vol. I., (London, 1804), Dissertation X., p. 103:

For love alone of every thing pertaining to men, when it subsists with purity, neither admires wealth, nor dreads a tyrant, nor is astonished by empire, nor avoids a court of judicature, nor flies from death. It does not consider as dire either wild beasts, or fire, or a precipice, or the sea, or a sword, or a halter; but to it things impervious are most pervious, things dire are most easily vanquished, things terrible are most readily encountered, and things difficult are most speedily accomplished. All rivers are passable, tempests most navigable, mountains most easily run over. It is everywhere confident, despises all things, and subdues all things. To love, when love is of this kind, is a thing of great worth. I indeed think that the man of intellect will pray never to be liberated from such love as this, if it is at the same time attended with liberty, intrepidity, and an immunity from guilt.