“Friendship … receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal.”

Part 3
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Friendship … receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equ…" by Étienne de La Boétie?
Étienne de La Boétie photo
Étienne de La Boétie 12
French judge, writer and philosopher 1530–1563

Related quotes

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions.”

Part 1, Chapter 9 (page 31)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Swami Vivekananda photo

“There cannot be friendship without equality.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented.”

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. IX, Beggars.
Context: We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented.

Margaret Atwood photo
Baba Hari Dass photo

“Household is a chariot. The parents are its two wheels. If the wheels don't move equally, the chariot cannot run straight.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Family and Community: (p. 35)
The Path to Enlightenment is not a Highway, 1996

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

As quoted in Divine Madness : On Interpreting Literature, Music, and The Visual Arts Ironically (2002) by Lars Elleström, p. 50
Variant translations, of the paradoxical statement which begins in German with Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben.:
It is equally fatal for the spirit, to have a system and not to have.
The Innovations of Idealism (2003) by Rüdiger Bubner, p. 193
It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two.
As quoted in Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy (2007) by Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, p. 203
It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system, and to have none. So the spirit must indeed resolve to combine the two.
As quoted in Hegel : Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6 : Volume I, (2009) by Robert F. Brown, footnote, p. 59

Brian Clevinger photo
Ralph George Hawtrey photo

“By its means the banker creates the means of payment out of nothing, whereas when he receives a bag of money from his customer, one means of payment, a bank credit, is merely substituted for another, an equal amount of cash.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: Currency and Credit (1919), Chapter II, "Metallic Money", p. 20 (2nd ed. 1921)
Context: The use of money does not disestablish the normal process of creating credit. Money, it is true, is always being paid into the banks by the retailers and others who receive it in the course of business, and they of course receive bank credits in return for the money thus deposited. But for the manufacturers and others who have to pay money out, credits are still created by the exchange of obligations, the banker's immediate obligation being given to his customer in exchange for the customer's obligation to repay at a future date. We shall still describe this dual operation as the creation of credit. By its means the banker creates the means of payment out of nothing, whereas when he receives a bag of money from his customer, one means of payment, a bank credit, is merely substituted for another, an equal amount of cash.

“Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.”

"Cliffrose and Bayonets", p. 37
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)

Related topics