
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem
Context: More than a century ago, in 1804, in Letter XC of that series that constitutes the immense monody of his Obermann, Sénancour wrote the words which I have put at the head of this chapter — and of all the spiritual descendants of the patriarchal Rousseau, Sénancour was the most profound and intense; of all the men of heart and feeling that France has produced, not excluding Pascal, he was the most tragic. "Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it is nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be a just fate." Change this sentence from it negative to the positive form — "And if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it shall be an unjust fate" — and you get the firmest basis of action for the man who cannot or will not be a dogmatist.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/mar/17/the-late-sir-austen-chamberlain in the House of Commons upon the death of Sir Austen Chamberlain (17 March 1937).
1937
Context: In the remote parts of that countryside where I was born and where old English phrases linger, though they may now be dying, even now I hear among those old people this phrase about those who die "He has gone home." It was a universal phrase among the old agricultural labourers, whose life was one toil from their earliest days to their last, and I think that that phrase must have arisen from the sense that one day the toil would be over and the rest would come, and that rest, the cessation of toil, wherever that occurred would be home. So they say, "He has gone home." When our long days of work are over here there is nothing in our oldest customs which so stirs the imagination of the young Member as the cry which goes down the Lobbies, "Who goes home?" Sometimes when I hear it I think of the language of my own countryside and my feeling that for those who have borne the almost insupportable burden of public life there may well be a day when they will be glad to go home. So Austen Chamberlain has gone home.... he had an infinite faith in the Parliamentary system of this country. Let us resolve once more that we can best keep his memory bright by confirming our own resolution that government of the people by the people shall never perish on this earth.
“May that day perish from Time's record, nor future generations believe it! Let us at least keep silence, and suffer the crimes of our own house to be buried deep in whelming darkness.”
Excidat illa dies aevo nec postera credant
saecula. nos certe taceamus et obruta multa
nocte tegi propriae patiamur crimina gentis.
ii, line 88 (tr. J. H. Mozley)
Silvae, Book V
“Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.”
Liberemus diuturna cura populum Romanum, quando mortem senis exspectare longum censent. (Latin, not original language)
Last words according to Livy "ab urbe condita", Book XXXIX, 51.
“Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.”
Source: The Fountainhead
“Come, let us arm with speed; and let us two
Try, what our forces may united do.”
Book XIII
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)
“If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.”
History and Politics http://books.google.com/books?id=7I82AAAAIAAJ&q="If+the+state+is+strong+it+crushes+us+If+it+is+weak+we+perish" as translated by D. Folliot and J. Mathews (1971)