“God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.”

— Hannibal

As quoted by Livy, :la:s:Ab Urbe Condita/liber XXI 44, as translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt, in The War with Hannibal (1965).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 29, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death." by Hannibal?

Hannibal6

military commander of Carthage during the Second Punic War -247–-183 BC

Related quotes

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

“How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Speech delivered at the Yad Vashem Museum at Jerusalem, Israel - March 23, 2000 http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/yad_vashem.htm

“I feel convinced that every man has given him of God much more than he has any idea of, and that he can help on the world's work more than he knows of. What we want is the single eye that will see what our work is, the humility to accept it, however lowly, the faith to do it for God, the perseverance to go on till death.”

Norman MacLeod (1812–1872) (1812–1872) Scottish clergyman and author (1812–1872)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.

“God has given a great deal to man, but man would like something from man.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Dios le ha dado mucho al hombre; pero el hombre quisiera algo del hombre.
Voces (1943)

“Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 196)

“God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Pathfinder (1840)

“True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven”

Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Canto V, stanza 13.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
Context: True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.