“All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.”
Plotinus (203–270) Neoplatonist philosopher
II.3.7
The First Ennead (c. 250)
Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157 <!-- also in Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic (1921) by Raymond Melbourne Weaver -->
Context: Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory — the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.
“All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.”
Plotinus (203–270) Neoplatonist philosopher
II.3.7
The First Ennead (c. 250)
“Recognition of one’s fellows is distorted when money is prioritized as value itself.”
Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)
State of the Art (2000)
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 5: 1922
“Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine
Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies (1886) [C. Scribner's Sons, 1972, 396 pages], p. 67
Context: Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer
"1901", p. 76. Sometimes misquoted as "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing". Sometimes misattributed to Bertrand Russell or Anatole France
A Writer's Notebook (1946)