Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.
"The Salutation", stanza 7; The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. (London: Bertram Dobell, 1903) p. 3.
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117
The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)
“I see the right, and I approve it too,
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.”
Translation of Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 20 (translated by Tate and Stonestreet, edited by Garth), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue" [veggio ’l meglio, et al peggior m’appiglio], Petrarch, Sonnet ccxxv. canzone xxi. To Laura in Life.
1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)
Context: TO AMERICANS. THAT some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.
“Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.”
"Of Time, and Gully Foyle", Foreword to a 1999 edition of The Stars My Destination (1956)
Context: You can tell when a Hollywood historical film was made by looking at the eye makeup of their leading ladies, and you can tell the date of an old science fiction novel by every word on the page. Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.
