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.
From a letter by Thomas Carlyle to Relph Emerson, Chelsea, London, 30 April, 1860:
I feel always, what I have some times written, that there is (in a sense) but one completely human voice to me in the world; and that you are it, and have been,—thanks to you, whether you speak or not!
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, pt. I., tr. Hans Hong and Edna Hong, (Princeton, 1987), The Immediate Erotic Stages, pp. 60-61:
What one has come to know piece by piece, just as a bird gleans each little straw for itself, happier over each little bit than over all the rest of the world; what the loving ear, solitary, has absorbed, solitary in the great crowd, unnoticed in its secret hiding place; what the avid ear has picked up, never satisfied, what the avaricious ear has preserved, never secure, of which the faintest echo has never disappointed the sleepless attention of the reconnoitering ear; what one has lived in during the day and relived at night, what has driven away sleep and made it restless, what one has dreamed about in sleep, what one has awakened to in order awake to dream about it again, for the sake of which one has leaped out of bed in the middle of the night out of fear of forgetting it; what has made its appearance to one in the most inspired moments, what one has always had at hand like a woman’s needlework, what has accompanied one on bright moonlit nights, in lonely forests by the lake, on gloomy streets, in the middle of the night, at the break of day; what has sat with one on the same horse, what has been company in the carriage; what has permeated the home, what one’s room has witnessed, what has resonated in the ear, what has reverberated in the soul, what the soul has spun into its finest fabric—this now shows itself to thought. Just as in the old tales those enigmatic beings, draped in seaweed, rise up from the bottom of the sea, so this rises up from the sea of recollection, intertwined with mementos. The soul becomes sad and the heart mellow, for it is as if one were taking leave of it, as if one were parting never to meet again, neither in time nor in eternity. One feels that one is being unfaithful, that one has betrayed one’s pact; one feels that one is no longer the same, not as young, not as childlike; one fears for oneself, that one will lose what made one happy, blissful, and rich; one fears for what one loves, that it will suffer in this change, will perhaps appear less perfect, that it will possibly fail to answer the many questions, alas, and then all is lost, the magic is gone, and it can never again be evoked. As for Mozart’s music, my soul knows no fear, my confidence no limits. For one thing, what I have understood hitherto is only very little, and enough will always remain, hiding in the shadows of presentiment . . .
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, pt. I., tr. Hans Hong and Edna Hong, (Princeton, 1987), Diapsalmata, p. 34:
When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to become a councilor, that the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say «May it do you good» after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, pt. I., tr. Hans Hong and Edna Hong, (Princeton, 1987), Diapsalmata, p. 29:
My soul is so heavy that no thought can carry it any longer, no wing beat can lift it up into the ether any more. If it is moved, it merely skims along the ground, just as birds fly low when a thunderstorm is blowing up. Over my inner being broods an oppressiveness, an anxiety, that forebodes an earth-quake.
Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, vol. III., (London, 1892), Charlotte Brontë, pp. 1-2:
. . . After all, though criticism cannot boast of being a science, it ought to aim at something like a scientific basis, or at least to proceed in a scientific spirit. The critic, therefore, before abandoning himself to the oratorical impulse, should endeavour to classify the phenomena with which he is dealing as calmly as if he were ticketing a fossil in a museum. The most glowing eulogy, the most bitter denunciation, have their proper place; but they belong to the art of persuasion, and form no part of scientific method. Our literary, like our religious, creed should rest upon a purely rational ground, and be exposed to logical tests. Our faith in an author must, in the first instance, be the product of instinctive sympathy, instead of deliberate reason. It may be propagated by the contagion of enthusiasm, and preached with all the fervour of proselytism. But when we are seeking to justify our emotions, we must endeavour to get for the time into the position of an independent spectator, applying with rigid impartiality such methods as are best calculated to free us from the influence of personal bias.
Undoubtedly it is a very difficult task to be alternately witness and judge; to feel strongly, and yet to analyse coolly; to love every feature in a familiar face, and yet to decide calmly upon its intrinsic ugliness or beauty. To be an adequate critic is almost to be a contradiction in terms; to be susceptible to a force, and yet free from its influence; to be moving with the stream, and yet to be standing on the bank. . . .
Maximus Tyrius, The Dissertations, tr. Thomas Taylor, vol. I., (London, 1804), Dissertation V., p. 50:
. . . the husbandman considers the inhabitants of cities blessed, as passing a joyful and florid life: but those who are busied in assemblies and courts of judicature, and who are highly celebrated in cities, deplore their condition, and pray that they may live among ploughs, and in a small farm. You may also hear the soldier praising the felicity of a peaceful life, and those who live quietly admiring the condition of the soldier. Though if some god, after the manner of actors in a drama, should divest each of his present life, and transfer to him that of his neighbour, these very men would again desire their former, and bewail their present, condition. Thus it is that man is very morose and querulous, and difficult in the extreme, and that no one is content with his proper situation.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introductory Aphorisms, §IV:
It is the advice of the wise man, ‘Dwell at home,’or, with yourself; and though there are very few that do this, yet it is surprising that the greatest part of mankind cannot be prevailed upon, at least to visit themselves sometimes; but, according to the saying of the wise Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth.
A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. (‘Omnis boni principium intellectus cogitabundus.’) It is at once the disgrace and the misery of men, that they live without fore-thought. Suppose yourself fronting a mirror. Now what the objects behind you are to their images at the same apparent distance before you, such is Reflection to Fore-thought. As a man without Fore-thought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so Fore-thought without Reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.
John Caspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man, (London, 1792), §102, p. 40:
He who can despise nothing can value nothing with propriety; and who can value nothing has no right to despise any thing.
Montesquieu, My Thoughts (Mes Pensées), §761, tr. Henry C. Clark:
That spirit of glory and valor is being lost little by little among us. Philosophy has gained ground. The former ideas of heroism and the chivalric romances have been lost. Civil offices are filled by men who have wealth, and military offices are discredited by men who have nothing. In short, it is almost everywhere a matter of indifference for one’s fortunes to belong to one master or another, whereas in the past a defeat or your city’s capture was linked to destruction—it was a question of being sold into slavery, of losing one’s city, one’s gods, one’s wife, and one’s children. The establishment of commerce in public funds; the immense gifts of princes, which enable an enormous number of people to live in idleness and obtain esteem by their very idleness, that is, by their charm; indifference toward the afterlife, which entails flabbiness in this life, and makes us unfeeling and incapable of anything that takes effort; fewer occasions to distinguish ourselves; a certain methodical way of taking cities and engaging in battle—being merely a question of making a breach and surrendering once it is made; all of war consisting more in the technique than in the personal qualities of those who fight it—at each siege, the number of soldiers to be sacrificed is known in advance; the nobility no longer fight as a corps.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portugese, vi-vii:
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away
For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this ... this lute and song ... loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.
Heinrich Heine, Confessions 1853-4, trans. Fleishman (found in his Prose Writings, intro. Havelock Ellis, 1887):
Oh, the women! we must forgive them much, for they love much—and many. Their hate is, in fact, only love turned the wrong way. At times they try to injure us, but only because they hope thereby to please some other man. When they write, they have one eye on the paper and the other on a man. This rule applies to all authoresses, with the exception of Countess Hahn-Hahn, who only has one eye. We male authors have also our prejudices. We write for or against something, for or against an idea, for or against a party; but women always write for or against one particular man, or, to express it more correctly, on account of one particular man. We men will sometimes lie outright; women, like all passive creatures, seldom invent, but can so distort a fact that they can thereby injure us more surely than by a downright lie. I verily believe my friend Balzac was right when he once said to me, in a sorrowful tone, «La femme est un être dangereux.»
Yes, women are dangerous; but I must admit that beautiful women are not so dangerous as those whose attractions are intellectual rather than physical; for the former are accustomed to have men pay court to them, while the latter meet the vanity of men half-way, and through the bait of flattery acquire a more powerful influence than the beautiful women. I by no means intend to insinuate that Madame de Staël was ugly; but beauty is something quite different. She had single points which were pleasing; but the effect as a whole was anything but pleasing. To nervous persons, like the sainted Schiller, her custom of continually twirling between her fingers some fragment of paper or similar small article was particularly annoying. This habit made poor Schiller dizzy, and in desperation he grasped her pretty hand to hold it quiet. This innocent action led Madame de Staël to believe that the tender-hearted poet was overpowered by the magic of her personal charms. I am told that she really had very pretty hands and beautiful arms, which she always displayed. Surely the Venus of Milo could not show such beautiful arms! Her teeth surpassed in whiteness those of the finest steed of Araby. She had very large, beautiful eyes, a dozen amorets would have found room on her lips, and her smile is said to have been very sweet: therefore she could not have been ugly,—no woman is ugly. But I venture to say that had fair Helen of Sparta looked so, the Trojan War would not have occurred, and the strongholds of Priam would not have been burned, and Homer would never have sung the wrath of Pelidean Achilles.
Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 2.7.7 (Philetas speaking; tr. Jeffrey Henderson, LCL 69, 2009, p. 69):
No, there is no remedy for Love, none to drink, to eat, or chant in songs, except kissing, embracing, and lying down together with naked bodies.
Ἔρωτος γὰρ οὐδὲν φάρμακον, οὐ πινόμενον, οὐκ ἐσθιόμενον, οὐκ ἐν ᾠδαῖς λαλούμενον, ὅτι μὴ φίλημα καὶ περιβολὴ καὶ συγκατακλιθῆναι γυμνοῖς σώμασι.
Another Eng. trans. (by Rowland Smith, 1889):
. . . for there is no mighty magic against love; no medicine, whether in food or drink: nothing, in short, save kisses and embraces, and the closest union of the naked body.
Georg Friedrich Händel, Jephtha 1752, §52, says Iphis, words by Thomas Morell:
Farewell, ye limpid springs and floods
Ye flow’ry meads and leafy woods;
Farewell, thou busy world where reign
Short hours of joy and years of pain.
Brighter scenes I seek above
In the realms of peace and love.
J. G. Zimmermann, Aphorisms and Reflections, (London, 1800), p. 229:
Be fit to live; be ready to die! Never can I peruse these words without the strongest agitation. What has been undergone, what has been suffered, what struggles have been made, before we are fit to live! and, the point once attain'd, we are to be ready to enter into a state totally unconnected with life! Oh, 'tis a melancholy reflection, that those creatures who are fit to live shou'd ever die. What do the present and the future lose by one such death?
Hesiod, Works and Days 293-297 (tr. Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library, 2006, p. 111):
The man who thinks of everything by himself, considering what will be better, later and in the end—this man is the best of all. That man is fine too, the one who is persuaded by someone who speaks well. But whoever neither thinks by himself nor pays heed to what someone else says and lays it to his heart—that man is good for nothing.
οὗτος μὲν πανάριστος, ὃς αὐτὸς πάντα νοήσει
φρασσάμενος τά κ' ἔπειτα καὶ ἐς τέλος ᾖσιν ἀμείνω·
ἐσθλὸς δ' αὖ καὶ κεῖνος, ὃς εὖ εἰπόντι πίθηται·
ὃς δέ κε μήτ' αὐτὸς νοέῃ μήτ' ἄλλου ἀκούων
ἐν θυμῷ βάλληται, ὃ δ' αὖτ' ἀχρήιος ἀνήρ.
William Edward Lecky, History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne, vol. I., (New York: 3rd edt., 1897), ch. II., The Pagan Empire, pp, 210-212:
The main object of the pagan philosophers was to dispel the terrors the imagination had cast around death, and by destroying this last cause of fear to secure the liberty of man. The main object of the Catholic priests has been to make death in itself as revolting and appalling as possible, and by representing escape from its terrors as hopeless, except by complete subjection to their rule, to convert it into an instrument of government. By multiplying the dancing or warning skeletons, and other sepulchral images representing the loathsomeness of death without its repose; by substituting inhumation for incremation, and concentrating the imagination on the ghastliness of decay; above all, by peopling the unseen world with demon phantoms and with excruciating tortures, the Catholic Church succeeded in making death in itself unspeakably terrible, and in thus preparing men for the consolations it could offer. Its legends, its ceremonies, its art, its dogmatic teaching, all conspired to this end, and the history of its miracles is a striking evidence of its success. The great majority of superstitions have ever clustered around two centres—the fear of death and the belief that every phenomenon of life is the result of a special spiritual interposition. Among the ancients they were usually of the latter kind. Auguries, prophecies, interventions in war, prodigies avenging the neglect of some rite or marking some epoch in the fortunes of a nation or of a ruler, are the forms they usually assumed. In the middle ages, although these were very common, the most conspicuous superstitions took the form of visions of purgatory or hell, conflicts with visible demons, or Satanic miracles. Like those mothers who govern their children by persuading them that the dark is crowded with spectres that will seize the disobedient, and who often succeed in creating an association of ideas which the adult man is unable altogether to dissolve, the Catholic priests resolved to base their power upon the nerves; and as they long exercised an absolute control over education, literature, and art, they succeeded in completely reversing the teaching of ancient philosophy, and in making the terrors of death for centuries the nightmare of the imagination.
. . . That man is not only an imperfect but a fallen being, and that death is the penal consequence of his sin, was a doctrine profoundly new to mankind, and it has exercised an influence of the most serious character upon the moral history of the world.
Lord Bolingbroke, Reflections Upon Exile:
Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.
The recalling of former misfortunes serves to fortify the mind against later. He must blush to sink under the anguish of one wound, who surveys a body seamed over with the scars of many, and who has come victorious out of all the conflicts wherein he received them. Let sighs, and tears, and fainting under the lightest strokes of adverse fortune, be the portion of those unhappy people whose tender minds a long course of felicity has enervated; while such, as have passed through years of calamity, bear up, with a noble and immoveable constancy, against the heaviest. Uninterrupted misery has this good effect, as it continually torments, it finally hardens.
Lord Bolingbroke, The Occasional Writer, No. II.:
Between all extremes there is a certain middle point, which men of genius perceive, and to which men of honor adhere in private and in public life.
Thus avarice and prodigality are atan immense distance; but there is a space marked out by virtue between them, where frugality and generosity reside together. Thus again, to abandon those, whom it is our interest to support, is an excess of folly; and to support the interests of other people, to the ruin of our own, is an excess of folly likewise. But there are lines described by prudence , between these two excesses, within which our common interests meet, and may proceed together.
Says Palladas, in: The Greek Anthology, IV., tr. W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library, 1918), bk. X., §46, p. 27:
Silence is men's chief learning. The sage Pythagoras himself is my witness. He, knowing himself how to speak, taught others to be silent, having discovered this potent drug to ensure tranquillity.
S. S. Knight, Human Life, 1910, ch, vii., Love, p. 158:
Of all virtues, sincerity is the greatest, yet, broadly speaking, how extremely rare! There is almost no trouble and pains which people will not take to make the world think that they are something other than they really are, when but a fraction of the cost might make them what they are trying to seem to be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Autobiography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life , tr. John Oxenford, bks. I-XX (London: George B...