The Weight of Glory (1949)
“For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.”
Composition as Explanation (1926)
Context: For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Context: No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
“What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.”
quid est sapienta? semper idem velle atque idem nolle.
Here, Seneca uses the same observation that Sallust made regarding friendship (in his historical account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae[XX.4]) to define wisdom.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XX: On practicing what you preach, Line 5
Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 62
Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
September 11, 2007
The Areas of My Expertise (2005), Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 274
Context: When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed, there will be no peace. As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war. Unfortunately it is difficult to imagine that all the young men in all of the countries will refuse to go to war at the same time. And so you must work out what violence has wrought. Within the next hundred years, that time may come. Remember, you do not defend any idea with violence. There is no man who hates but that hatred is reflected outward and made physical. And there is no man who loves but that love is reflected outward and made physical.
"Perfect Knowledge in Final Things" (p. 110)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)
“Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.”
Reflections
