Source: Laughable Loves
Eminent Indians (1947)
“Man's knowledge, save before his fellow man,
Is ignorance—his widest wisdom folly.”
The Coming of Love and Other Poems (1897)
Source: "Prophetic Pictures at Venice VII: New Year's Morning, 1867", p. 207.
“Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.”
Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)
“Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”
“Wisdom and intellect is every man's friend, ignorance and illiteracy are his enemies.”
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 467.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 5.
“One, knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption”
Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Context: One, knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption, and that the other, knowing the impotence and being ignorant of the duty, falls into laxity; whence it seems that since the one leads to truth, the other to error, there would be formed from their alliance a perfect system of morals. But instead of this peace, nothing but war and a general ruin would result from their union; for the one establishing certainty, the other doubt, the one the greatness of man, the other his weakness, they would destroy the truths as well as the falsehoods of each other. So that they cannot subsist alone because of their defects, nor unite because of their opposition, and thus they break and destroy each other to give place to the truth of the Gospel. This it is that harmonizes the contrarieties by a wholly divine act, and uniting all that is true and expelling all that is false, thus makes of them a truly celestial wisdom in which those opposites accord that were incompatible in human doctrines.
Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943)
“Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?”
Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 345
