“The muddy, impure world, so undiscriminating,
Seeks always to hide beauty, out of jealousy.”
Qu Yuan (-343–-278 BC) ancient Chinese poet
Source: "Encountering Sorrow" (trans. David Hawkes), Line 107
Source: "Encountering Sorrow" (trans. David Hawkes), Line 127
“The muddy, impure world, so undiscriminating,
Seeks always to hide beauty, out of jealousy.”
Qu Yuan (-343–-278 BC) ancient Chinese poet
Source: "Encountering Sorrow" (trans. David Hawkes), Line 107
“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”
Henry Fielding book The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Source: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
“Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.”
Nam cupide conculcatur nimis ante metutum.
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book V, line 1140 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Joaquin Miller Songs of the Sierras
Burns and Byron (also known as In Men Whom Men Condemn), p. 175.
Songs of the Sierras (1871)
Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
“Ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain.”
Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher
§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Variant: We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
Context: But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer