Sedulia's Quotations

Julius Caesar: impossible not to become what others believe you are

In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.

                --Julius Caesar, quoted in Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel García Márquez (1928-)

Old caution against intellectual pride, from Thomas à Kempis

Ch. II

1. All men naturally desire to know, but what availeth knowledge without the fear of God?

Surely, an humble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher that neglecting himself laboureth to understand the heavens.

Whoso knoweth himself well, groweth more mean in his own conceit [i.e. in his own view], and delighteth not in the praises of men.

2. ...Cease from an inordinate desire of knowing, for therein is much distraction and deceit.

...There be many things, which to know doth little or nothing profit the soul;

And he is very unwise, that is intent upon other things than those that may avail him for his salvation.

Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life comforteth the mind, and a pure conscience giveth great assurance in the sight of God.

3. How much the more thou knowest, and how much the better thou understandest, so much the more grievously shalt thou therefore be judged, unless thy life be also more holy.

Be not therefore extolled in thine own mind for any art or science, but rather let the knowledge given thee, make thee more humble and cautious.

...If thou wilt know or learn anything profitably, desire to be unknown and to be little esteemed.

4. The highest and most profitable reading, is the true knowledge and consideration of ourselves.

It is great wisdom and perfection to esteem nothing of ourselves, and to think always well and highly of others.

...We are all frail, but thou oughtest to esteem none more frail than thyself.

        --Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis (1379/80-1471), tr by "F.B." Anthony Hoskins, Jesuit, ca 1613

Winston Churchill on Stanley Baldwin: He occasionally stumbled over the truth

He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

        --Winston Churchill (1873-1965) on Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), U.K. Prime Minister

Churchill: War is a game to be played with a smiling face

War is a game to be played with a smiling face.

        --Winston Churchill (1874-1965) to his battalion, quoted in Winston Churchill at the Front by, A.D. Gibb

Nicholas Wright's Van Gogh on Depression: It starts with something small and then it becomes everything

It starts with something small and then it becomes everything.

        --From "Vincent in Brixton," play by Nicholas Wright about Van Gogh

J.R.R. Tolkien: If anguish were visible

If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour....

        --J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), in a letter, April 1944
    Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien

Jorge Luís Borges: The library of Babel

I have traveled through the cities of Europe, I have forgotten thousands of pages, thousands of unsubstitutable human faces, but I keep thinking that, essentially, I have never left that library and that garden.

--From The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luís Borges (1899-1986)

He recorrido las ciudades de Europa, he olvidada miles de páginas, miles de insustuibles caras humanas, pero suelo pensar que, esencialmente, nunca he salido de esa biblioteca y de ese jardín.

Marcus Aurelius and RW Emerson: What is a man's life?

A man's life is what his thoughts make of it.

--Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) , Emperor of Rome, translated by Unknown

A man is what he thinks all day long.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
 

Alas for the egg

If a rock falls on an egg, alas for the egg.
If an egg falls on a rock, alas for the egg.

                    --Cypriot proverb

[I don't know if this is really a Cypriot proverb. I wrote it down years ago without the source and now I can't find it. It's a good proverb anyway.]

Patrick McGrath: The living are larvae

"I remember reading somewhere that the living are just a rare species of the dead. I don't believe this. The living, I think, are larvae of the dead-- dead bodies at an early stage of development."

        --Sir Hugo Coal in The Grotesque, by Patrick McGrath