
From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (January 2, 1926)
Letters
From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (January 2, 1926)
Letters
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.”
Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 178-179
Context: Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
“Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.”
Preface
The Marble Faun (1860)
Context: No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.
Christopher Langton, as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science (1996) p. 201.
“You're an Apprentice! You're not ready to think!"
Gilan and Halt.
The Ruins of Gorlan.”
Variant: You're an apprentice, you're not ready to think yet.
-Ranger's Apprentice
T. S. Eliot, in Alida Monro (ed.) The Collected Poems of Harold Monro (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1933) p. xiv.
Criticism
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land
“The one who acts without knowledge, destroys and ruins more than he rectifies.”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 364
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General