Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits.
Aphorism 95
Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme
Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits.
Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme
“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude”
As quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk
2000s
“The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show.”
“Sin which men account small brings God's great wrath on men.”
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652
Book V, ch. 1
The History of Tom Jones (1749)
“Great men are sometimes so even in small things.”
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.
Prof. Barus' Retirement dinner speech, Brown University (1926) as quoted by in One of the 999 about to be Forgotten: Memoirs of Carl Barus, 1865-1935 (2005) ed., Axel W.-O. Scmidt.
Context: [L]et me refer to my original work. Naturally, if a student has been hammering away ever since 1979... he must have accumulated a lot of litter, much of which, perhaps, should have long since been swept away. But the fates are not to be bribed either by pother or importunity. Out of 1,000 men who are called, one (probably the ratio is much smaller) is chosen to do glorious scientific work. The others? Their lot is failure. They may be equally or even more industrious, they may have equal or even greater brain power—the other 999 exist merely to make the illustrious one in whom they culminate, possible. After that, the world will say to each in words of poetic brevity: "The man has done his duty, the man can go." And they do, pretty quickly, to a gentler lethe, flowing between the banks of amaranth and asphodel.
Gentlemen, I am one of the 999 about to be forgotten.
“Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.”
:3 Fish: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
:1 Fish. Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.
:*William Shakespeare, Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1.
Source: Discourses Concerning Government (1689), Ch. 2, Sect. 18; comparable to:
