Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 4
“It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.”
Book I, 1
Histories (100-110)
Original
Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks." by Tacitus?
Tacitus 42
Roman senator and historian 54–120Related quotes
“One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks.”
Joseph Joubert
(1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Leonard Nimoy
(1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer
"Leonard Nimoy's Confessions About His Emotions", TV And Movie Play magazine (1967)
Ferdinand Foch
(1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist
Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p.
Context: To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution.
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quiet continuously a sense of their existence and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom?
An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.
All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! — that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all.
“One always adds a little of one's soul to what one thinks.”
Joseph Joubert
(1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1893); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin
1890s
“So far as consciousness goes, one does one's thinking before one knows what he is to think about.”
Edwin Boring
(1886–1968) American psychologist
Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 397: Cited in: Jay M. Jackson (2013) Social Psychology, Past and Present: An Integrative Orientation, p. 28
“What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common….”
Source: The Drawing of the Three
Walter Raleigh
(1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer
Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25