“Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show,
We may our ends by our beginnings know.”
John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier
Of Prudence, line 225.
“Old age doth in sharp pains abound;
We are belabored by the gout,
Our blindness is a dark profound,
Our deafness each one laughs about.
Then reason's light with falling ray
Doth but a trembling flicker cast.
Honor to age, ye children pay!
Alas! my fifty years are past!”
Cinquante Ans, C. L. Betts' translation; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 13.
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We are belabored by the gout,
Our blindness is a dark profound,
Our deafness eac…" by Pierre-Jean de Béranger?
Pierre-Jean de Béranger9
French poet and chansonnier 1780–1857Related quotes
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
(1834-1) (Vol.40) The Future, compare Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides) I, 31
The Monthly Magazine
“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist
Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 266
William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land
Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 13
“This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on.”
Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician
Source: The Discovery of the Child (1948), Ch. 8 : The Exercises, p. 141
Variant translation:
This then is the first duty of an educator: to stir up life but leave it free to develop.
Context: This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on. I compare the effects of these first lessons the impressions of a solitary wanderer who is walking serene and happy in a shady grove, meditating; that is leaving his inner thought free to wander. Suddenly a church bell pealing out nearby recalls to himself; then he feels more keenly that peaceful bliss which had already been born, though dormant, within him.
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the first duty of the educator.
For such a delicate mission great art is required to suggest the right moment and to limit intervention, last one should disturb or lead astray rather than help the soul which is coming to life and which will live by virtue of it's own efforts.
This art must accompany the scientific method, because the simplicity of our lessons bears a great resemblance to experiments in experimental psychology.
“And this doth overpass all other pain,
To find that our last hope is all in vain.”
Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet
Ed ogni altro martir passa ed avanza
Trovarsi vana l'ultima speranza.
XXIX, 13
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato
John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn
Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and others without any quotation marks. The poet's final intentions upon the matter before his death are unclear.
Poems (1820), Ode on a Grecian Urn
Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.
On the early rivalry between Macintosh and "IBM-compatible" computers based on Microsoft's DOS, as quoted in Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward (1987) by Jeffrey S. Young, p. 235
1980s
