"A Task"
Context: We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons
But pure and generous words were forbidden
Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one
Considered himself as a lost man.
Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 7, Section 6, pp. 51-52
“There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.”
Rescue (1945)
Context: Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.
“Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.”
Prologue
Wallenstein (1798), Prologue - Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp)
“We take no pleasure in permitted joys.
But what's forbidden is more keenly sought.”
Quod licet ingratum est. Quod non licet acrius urit.
Book II; xix, 3
Amores (Love Affairs)
“If our hearts were truly pure, we would never have our fill of the words of your Lord.”
Jami al-Uloon wa'l-Hikm, p. 363
“Our fathers were demons,' Catarina said. 'Our mothers were heroes.”
Source: What Really Happened in Peru
“The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.”
Israel's Peculiar Position (1968)
Context: The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese — and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.
Arnold J. Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky, verse 2, lines 5-11
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
Source: Life on the Mississippi
