On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843)
Context: Spain stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Every thing was force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell by fire and sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire and sword.
Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
Symbol 9
Variant translation: Poke not the fire with a sword.
As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 455
The Symbols
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world and of our will-to-live. We must all venture once more to be "thinkers," so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the only profound world-view. We must all wander in the field of knowledge to the point where knowledge passes over into experience of the world. We must all, through thought, become religious.
This rational thought must become the prevailing force among us, for all the valuable ideas that we need develop out of it. In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew.
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Pythagoras, 17.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 8: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer
II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)
Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso
Che quella che da l'oro e da l'argento
Difende il cor di pudicizia armato,
Tra mille spade via più facilmente
Difenderallo, e in mezzo al fuoco ardente.
Canto XLIII, stanza 68 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet
Ó Rei subido,
Aventurar-me a ferro, a fogo, a neve
É tão pouco por vós, que mais me pena
Ser esta vida cousa tão pequena.
Stanza 79, lines 5–8 (tr. Thomas Moore Musgrave)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author
The Golden Man (1954)
Context: The chamber was an inferno of energy. The figure had completely disappeared. Wisdom waited a moment, then nodded to the technicians operating the cube. They touched guide buttons and the muzzles slowed and died. Some sank back into the cube. All became silent. The works of the cube ceased humming.
Cris Johnson was still alive. He emerged from the settling clouds of ash, blackened and singed. But unhurt. He had avoided each beam. He had weaved between them and among them as they came, a dancer leaping over glittering sword-points of pink fire. He had survived.
