“Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height.”
Vitruvius book De architectura
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book X, Chapter VII, Sec. 1
John Stuart Mill, as quoted by Stevenson in Call to Greatness (1954), p. 102; this has also been misquoted as "That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another."
Misattributed
“Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height.”
Vitruvius book De architectura
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book X, Chapter VII, Sec. 1
“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”
Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace
Variant: The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
Source: War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Ch. I
“Earth, left silent by the wind of night,
Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.”
William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman
"December".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Source: The Gay Science
“I look down from my height on nations
And they become ashes before me.”
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
"Carric", quoted in Thoreau, "Life Without Principle"
The Poems of Ossian
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer
Ibn Khaldun and Machiavelli, p. 147
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)
Anantanand Rambachan (1951) Hindu studies scholar
Source: The Nature and Authority of Scripture (1995), p. 23
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker
Opium (1929)