“Men seek each other out, the proverb says,
The mountain, motionless, unchanging stays.”

— Ludovico Ariosto , book Orlando Furioso

Dice il proverbio, ch'a trovar si vanno
Gli uomini spesso, e i monti fermi stanno.
Canto XXIII, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Original

Dice il proverbio, ch'a trovar si vanno Gli uomini spesso, e i monti fermi stanno.

Orlando Furioso (1532)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Men seek each other out, the proverb says, The mountain, motionless, unchanging stays." by Ludovico Ariosto?

Ludovico Ariosto 97

Italian poet 1474–1533

Related quotes

“The old proverb was now made good, "the mountain had brought forth a mouse."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say that they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politician stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Intellectual in America" (1955), from A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962)
General sources

“Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Context: Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God — these are never satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God. And matter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and matter answers: I wish not to be!

“A 'relationship' occurs when two people run out of things to say to each other, so they shut each other up by putting their genitals in each other's mouths. A break up comes about when they run out of things to do with those, too.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

11 November 2010
Fully Ramblomatic

“[A proverb is] one man's wit, and all men's wisdom.”

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878) leading Whig and Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister on two occasions

Remark to James Mackintosh on October 6, 1830, reported in his posthumous memoir, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, Vol. 2 (1836), p. 472 http://books.google.com/books?id=wHM4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22one+man's+wit+and+all+men's+wisdom%22&pg=PA472#v=onepage
Variant: [A proverb is] the wisdom of many and the wit of one.