“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”
Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
Phrixus, Frag. 830
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVI: On Various Aspects of Virtue
“Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?”
Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
Phrixus, Frag. 830
Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…
The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head.
Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action, — men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, — intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed, — these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights.
“All the soul of man is resolution, which in valiant men falters never, until their last breath.”
Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia
Ian Smith, "Bitter Harvest".
W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander Crummell
“If men and mortal arms ye slight,
Know there are gods who watch o'er right.”
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book I, p. 27
Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads
Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me.You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
The gate is strait; I shall not be there.</p
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Pyrrho, 8.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics