“He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.”

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 364
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Speaking at Women's march in Los Angeles (21 January 2017).

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
Context: There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all this from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He does not care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade — how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free" — unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

Letter http://archive.org/stream/thoughtandcharac032117mbp#page/n495/mode/2up/search/great+faith+man+God to William James (24 March 1907).
1900s

Article in Modern Review (1936) by a pseudonymous author signing himself "Chanakya", later revealed to have been Nehru himself; as quoted in TIME magazine : "Clear-Eyed Sister" (3 January 1955) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,892893,00.html & "The Uncertain Bellwether" (30 July 1956) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867026-8,00.html
Context: The most effective pose is one in which there seems to be the least of posing, and Jawahar had learned well to act without the paint and powder of an actor … What is behind that mask of his? … what will to power? … He has the power in him to do great good for India or great injury … Men like Jawaharlal, with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in a democracy.
He calls himself a democrat and a socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind is ultimately slave to the heart … Jawahar has all the makings of a dictator in him — vast popularity, a strong will, ability, hardness, an intolerance for others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient … In this revolutionary epoch, Caesarism is always at the door. Is it not possible that Jawahar might fancy himself as a Caesar? … He must be checked. We want no Caesars.

The Great Chain of Life (1956), Chapter 9 "The Vandal and the Sportsman" http://books.google.com/books?id=Ydc0cooCB6QC&lpg=PA146&q="when+a+man+wantonly+destroys+one+of+the+works+of+man+we+call+him+vandal+when+he+wantonly+destroys+one+of+the+works+of+god+we+call+him+sportsman"#v=onepage. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009, p. 148.

'Thomas Mann', p. 453
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

The Two Pioneers
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)