Sedulia's Quotations

Present-day life is polluted at the roots.

Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain...in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space? Merely thinking of it, I am suffocated!

....Perhaps, through an unheard-of catastrophe produced by devices, we will return to health. When poison gases no longer suffice, an ordinary man, in the secrecy of a room in this world, will invent an incomparable explosive, compared to which the explosives currently in existence will be considered harmless toys. And another man, also ordinary, but a bit sicker than others, will steal this explosive and will climb up at the center of the earth, to set it on the spot where it can have the maximum effect. There will be an enormous explosion that no one will hear, and the earth, once again a nebula, will wander through the heavens, freed of parasites and sickness.

        --The final words of The Conscience of Zeno (pub. 1923), by Italo Svevo (pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz) (1861-1928), translated by William Weaver

Natural law does not entitle us to happiness

It really offended me that he should believe himself the unluckiest man in the world....Natural law does not entitle us to happiness, but rather it prescribes wretchedness and sorrow. When something is edible is left exposed, from all directions parasites come running, and if there are no parasites, they are quickly generated. Soon the prey is barely sufficient, and immediately afterwards it no longer suffices at all, for nature doesn't do sums, she experiments. When food no longer suffices, then consumers must diminish through death preceded by pain; thus equilibrium, for a moment, is reestablished. Why complain? And yet everyone does complain.

        --From The Conscience of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (1861-1928 [pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz], translated wonderfully by William Weaver (b 1923).

From a single crime know the nation

 From a single crime
know the nation.

        -Virgil (70 B.C.-19 B.C.), Aeneid  ii.65

Crimine ab uno
disce omnes.

Henry James: Every man works better when he has companions

The best things come, as a general thing, from the talents that are members of a group; every man works better when he has companions working in the same line and yielding the stimulus of suggestion, comparison, emulation.

        --Henry James (1843-1916 )

One should want only one thing and want it constantly

One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything and consequently get nothing. Each time I discover, and too late, that one thing had come to me while I was running after another.

        --André Gide (1869-1951) in his journals

What she had wanted from men since she had swum and climbed with the boys

What she had wanted from men since she had swum and climbed with the boys... a need as deep and as fundamental, to be a man with his friend, emotion-free, objective, concerned not with relationships but with work and things....

        --Mary Renault (1905-1983)

Finley Peter Dunne: An Anglo-Saxon is a German that's forgot who was his parents

"An Anglo-Saxon, Hinnissy, is a German that's forgot who was his parents."

        --From Mr Dooley in Peace and in War, by Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

Left: Queen Victoria with her nephew, the Kaiser, and other German relatives. The Queen, who was mostly of German ancestry, and her family spoke German when they were alone.

From England comes neither good wind nor good war

From England comes neither good wind nor good war.

D'Angleterre
ne vient bon vent ni bonne guerre.

        --French proverb of the 1600s

Albert Camus: Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

        --Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Personne ne se rend compte que certaines personnes dépensent une énergie énorme simplement pour être normales.

One can think about life after the fish is in the canoe

One can think about life after the fish is in the canoe.

Aia a kau ka i'a i ka wa'a, mana'o ke ola.

       --Hawaiian proverb, quoted in Vanishing Voices: the Extinction of the World's Languages, by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine