“Little can be hoped for from a ruler… who has not at some time or other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first beginning and ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, with the "why" of his origin and the "wherefore" of his destiny.”

— Miguel de Unamuno

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone

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 "Little can be hoped for from a ruler… who has not at some time or other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with…" by Miguel de Unamuno?

Miguel de Unamuno 199

19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864–1936

Related quotes

“He was a great patriot, a great man; above all, a great American. His country was the ruling, mastering passion of his life from the beginning even unto the end.”

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) American statesman

Theodore Roosevelt, Address Before Congress (February 9, 1919).

“Out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

The Pretender from The Pretender (1976)

“Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

“Man is ultimately concerned about that which determines his ultimate destiny beyond all preliminary necessities and accidents.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Systematic Theology (1951–63)
Context: Man is infinitely concerned about the infinity to which he belongs, from which he is separated, and for which he is longing. Man is totally concerned about the totality which is his true being and which is disrupted in time and space. Man is unconditionally concerned about that which conditions his being beyond all the conditions in him and around him. Man is ultimately concerned about that which determines his ultimate destiny beyond all preliminary necessities and accidents.

“But people will say to me, "why ask selflessness and sacrifice only from the woman? What about the man?" To this, I answer, does not the man, the husband, who toils and moils to support his family, and especially if he is a gentleman, who has to do his duty not only to his family, but to his King and country, and, in doing that has, some time even to give his life: does he not also make sacrifice?”

Gu Hongming book The Spirit of the Chinese People

page 81
The Spirit of the Chinese People (1915), Chinese Woman

“In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control; even over his own will.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Address to the National Education Association (30 June 1938)
1930s

“In the Name of God, the Most Exalted, the Most Holy. All praise and glory befitteth the sacred and glorious court of the sovereign Lord, Who from everlasting hath dwelt, and unto everlasting will continue to dwell within the mystery of His Own divine Essence, Who from time immemorial hath abided and will forever continue to abide within His transcendent eternity, exalted above the reach and ken of all created beings. The sign of His matchless Revelation as created by Him and imprinted upon the realities of all beings, is none other but their powerlessness to know Him. The light He hath shed upon all things is none but the splendour of His Own Self. He Himself hath at all times been immeasurably exalted above any association with His creatures. He hath fashioned the entire creation in such wise that all beings may, by virtue of their innate powers, bear witness before God on the Day of Resurrection that He hath no peer or equal and is sanctified from any likeness, similitude or comparison. He hath been and will ever be one and incomparable in the transcendent glory of His divine being and He hath ever been indescribably mighty in the sublimity of His sovereign Lordship. No one hath ever been able befittingly to recognize Him nor will any man succeed at any time in comprehending Him as is truly meet and seemly, for any reality to which the term ‘being’ is applicable hath been created by the sovereign Will of the Almighty, Who hath shed upon it the radiance of His Own Self, shining forth from His most august station. He hath moreover deposited within the realities of all created things the emblem of His recognition, that everyone may know of a certainty that He is the Beginning and the End, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Maker and the Sustainer, the Omnipotent and the All-Knowing, the One Who heareth and perceiveth all things, He Who is invincible in His power and standeth supreme in His Own identity, He Who quickeneth and causeth to die, the All-Powerful, the Inaccessible, the Most Exalted, the Most High. Every revelation of His divine Essence betokens the sublimity of His glory, the loftiness of His sanctity, the inaccessible height of His oneness and the exaltation of His majesty and power. His beginning hath had no beginning other than His Own firstness and His end knoweth no end save His Own lastness.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

I, 1
The Persian Bayán

“The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb runs, "The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger."”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 191 (9 October 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

“Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 405 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=422&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
Closing paragraph of the book.
The Descent of Man (1871)

“Little can be hoped for from a ruler… who has not at some time or other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first beginning and ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, with the "why" of his origin and the "wherefore" of his destiny.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Miguel de Unamuno 199

Related quotes

Related topics