Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: On the same subject you will obtain more complete and more abstruse information by consulting the works upon it composed by the divine Iamblichus: you will find there the extreme limit of human wisdom attained. May the mighty Sun grant me to attain to no less knowledge of himself, and to teach it publicly to all, and privately to such as are worthy to receive it: and as long as the god grants this to us, let us consult in common his well-beloved Iamblichus; out of whose abundance a few things, that have come into my mind, I have here set down. That no other person will treat of this subject more perfectly than he has done, I am well aware; not even though he should expend much additional labour in making new discoveries in the research; for in all probability he will go astray from the most correct conception of the nature of the god.
“The extreme limit of wisdom — that’s what the public calls madness.”
Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
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Jean Cocteau 123
French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager … 1889–1963Related quotes
In SEEKING KNOWLEDGE IN THE LIGHT OF ISLAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOC6iZNwvqc
“Love calls it folly, what so wisdom saith.”
Nè consiglio d'uom sano Amor riceve.
Canto V, stanza 78 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
“Push your limit to the absolute extreme.”
“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
Source: Literary Remains, Vol. 1
“Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e
“They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.”
Remark after being incarcerated in Bedlam for five years, as quoted in the Introduction of A Social History of Madness : The World Through the Eyes of the Insane (1987) by Roy Porter; also in "The Madness of King Jesus : Why was Jesus Put to Death, but his Followers were not?" by Justin J. Meggitt in Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Vol. 29, No. 4 (June 2007) http://jnt.sagepub.com/content/29/4/379.abstract.
“Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.”
Police Shootings
1980s–1990s, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)