Go Rin No Sho (1645), Introduction
Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 29
Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 14
Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, 36
To John Kenneth Galbraith, who had been appointed American ambassador to India,
Charles Boarman, Sr. in a letter to Robert Brent, the mayor of Washington, D.C., asking for a letter of recommendation for his son's application to enlist in the United States Navy (1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)
If You Want to Feel
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)
Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)
Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004)
2000s
2010s, Tawakul Karman, Yemeni activist, and thorn in the side of Saleh (2011)
2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (11 February 2016)
1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970
“O maid, while youth is with the rose and thee,
Pluck thou the rose: life is as swift for thee.”
Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes,<br/>et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.
Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes,
et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.
"De Rosis Nascentibus", line 49; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics ([1929] 1943) p. 29.
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 104
Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: Part of the Parts
Historical Note, p. 531
The Man With the Iron Heart (2008)
Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love
"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010).
2010
A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)
Source: V. (1963), Chapter Nine, Part II, Godolphin
"At the End of Spring" (A.D. 810)
Arthur Waley's translations
Vol. 1, Pt. 2.
Panegyric (1989)
So You Want To Be A Seed AI Programmer http://web.archive.org/web/20101227203946/http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/So_You_Want_To_Be_A_Seed_AI_Programmer
1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)
And the Greatest of These Is Love, Tambuli, Aug 1984, 1.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
A jibe at Prime Minister (and First Lord of the Treasury) Ramsay MacDonald during a speech in the House of Commons, January 28, 1931 "Trade Disputes and Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/jan/28/trade-disputes-and-trade-unions-1#column_1021.
The 1930s
The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2
If They Come in The Morning (1971)
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
"The Bright Days of My Youth" (original Irish Gaelic title "Na Laetha Geal M'óige")
Song lyrics, Watermark (1988)
Amazon.com talk 2000
Source: Faitheist (2012), Chapter 5, “Unholier Than Thou: Saying Goodbye to God” (p. 84)
“What youth considers liberation, maturity considers tasteless excess.”
Discovering LaRochefoucauld http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/apr01/laroche.htm (April 2001).
New Criterion (2000 - 2005)
“Age is deformed, youth unkind,
We scorn their bodies, they our mind.”
Chrestoleros (1598), Bk.7, Epigram 9
On Coalition Government (1945)
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter V: The Fall of the First Men; Section 3, “The Cult of Youth” (p. 84)
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, Hadith 376
Sunni Hadith
V.D. Savarkar quoted from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
The Wreck
"Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly" http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2432 Quarterly Review, March 16, 2014.
2010s, 2014
Mi stupisco, quando vedo gente giovane mangiare carne. Mi sembra talmente cosa d'altre epoche! La gioventù carnivora non è coi tempi, ha uno stomaco da secolo XIX, che carnivorizzò l'Europa... Cibarsi di pezzi di animali macellati è un'anomalia, fuori della dieta vegetariana non c'è giovinezza vera. La carne è per lo più un'angosciata abitudine dei vecchi. Richiedere piatti di carne, parlarne, ricordarli è cosa da vecchi, e da vecchi incapaci di svecchiarsi con una dieta decisamente alternativa.
Insects without Borders: Thoughts of the Unknown Philosopher (Insetti senza frontiere: Pensieri del filosofo ignoto), Milan: Adelphi, 2009, § 34.
The Problems of Pediatrics in Israel. Child Health in Israel, pp. 9-13, 1971.
Night — Goodbye!
Youth, A Narrative http://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525.txt (1902)
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 29
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)
Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 16
Epigraph, Ch. 1 : Mount Shasta; this appears as "To Mount Shasta" in In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890), p. 126
Variant: I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write upon the sky
The awful autograph of God.
This variant was cited as being in The Ship in the Desert in the 10th edition of Familiar Quotations (1919) by John Bartlett, but this appears to be an incorrect citation of a misquotation first found in The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn (1910), edited by Elizabeth Bislande, p. 161.
Shadows of Shasta (1881)
Context: Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee, in thy glorious youth,
And loved thy vast face, white as truth;
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard dark mountains rock and roll;
I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll
The awful autograph of God!
“You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.”
The closing lines of the book. In a letter to William James (17 February 1908), Adams wrote with customary self-deprecation: "If you will read my Chartres,— the last chapter is the only thing I ever wrote that I almost think good." (J. C. Levinson et al. eds., The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume VI: 1906–1918. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1988, p. 121)
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: p>Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great gothic Cathedrals were its most complete expression.Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the gothic Cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,— the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,— never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the mental mirror,— all these haunting nightmares of the Church are expressed as strongly by the gothic Cathedral as though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of its self-distrust and anguish of doubt, is buried in the earth as its last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.</p
Edgard Varèse lecture, edited by Chou Wen-Chung, published in: 391, Nr. 5. June 17, 1917. Translated by Louise Varèse; Quoted in: Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music: A Continuing Symposium (1996), .
Context: Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.
Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives.
I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.
The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Lords of themselves and leaders of mankind. On equal rights their base of empire lies,
On walls of wisdom see the structure rise;
Wide o'er the gazing world it towers sublime,
A modell'd form for each surrounding clime.
To useful toils they bend their noblest aim,
Make patriot views and moral views the same,
Renounce the wish of war, bid conquest cease,
Invite all men to happiness and peace,
To faith and justice rear the youthful race,
Till Truth's blest banners, o'er the regions hurl'd,
Shake tyrants from their thrones, and cheer the waking world.
“You gotta rock that rainbow while you still got your youth!
Oh! Ain't it the solid truth?”
"Ain't It the Truth" originally written for Cabin in the Sky (1943), but pulled from the show, and later included in Jamaica (1957) - Lena Horne version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMSyXuvNpeM
Context: Life is short, short, brother!
Ain't it the truth?
And there is no other
Ain't it the truth?
You gotta rock that rainbow while you still got your youth!
Oh! Ain't it the solid truth?
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: "This wonder which my soul hath found,
This heart of music in the might of sound,
Shall forthwith be the share of all our race,
And like the morning gladden common space:
The song shall spread and swell as rivers do,
And I will teach our youth with skill to woo
This living lyre, to know its secret will;
Its fine division of the good and ill.
So shall men call me sire of harmony,
And where great Song is, there my life shall be."
Thus glorying as a god beneficent,
Forth from his solitary joy he went
To bless mankind.
Source: Life of Pythagoras, Ch. 2 : Youth, Education, Travels
Context: After his father's death, though he was still but a youth, his aspect was so venerable, and his habits so temperate that he was honored and even reverenced by elderly men, attracting the attention of all who saw and heard him speak, creating the most profound impression. That is the reason that many plausibly asserted that he was a child of the divinity. Enjoying the privilege of such a renown, of an education so thorough from infancy, and of so impressive a natural appearance he showed that he deserved all these advantages by deserving them, by the adornment of piety and discipline, by exquisite habits, by firmness of soul, and by a body duly subjected to the mandates of reason. An inimitable quiet and serenity marked all his words and actions, soaring above all laughter, emulation, contention, or any other irregularity or eccentricity; his influence at Samos was that of some beneficent divinity. His great renown, while yet a youth, reached not only men as illustrious for their wisdom as Thales at Miletus, and Bias at Prione, but also extended to the neighboring cities. He was celebrated everywhere as the "long-haired Samian," and by the multitude was given credit for being under divine inspiration.
Notes to his mother, on The Life of Humanity (1884-6) http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-moreau/humanity-the-golden-age-depicting-three-scenes-from-the-lives-of-adam-and-eve-the-silver-age-1886, his composition of a ten image polyptych, p. 48 · Photo of its exhibition on the 3rd Floor of Musée National Gustave Moreau http://en.musee-moreau.fr/house-museum/studios/third-floor
Gustave Moreau (1972)
Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in The Times (8 October 1903), p. 8.
1900s
Context: When I was in South Africa nothing was more inspiring, nothing more encouraging, to a Briton to find how the men who had either themselves come from its shore or were the descendants of those who had still retained the old traditions, still remembered that their forefathers were buried in its churchyards, that they spoke a common language, that they were under a common flag, still in their hearts desired to be remembered above all as British subjects, equally entitled with us to a part in the great Empire which they, as well as us, have contributed to make... I did not hesitate, however, to preach to them that it was not enough to shout for Empire... but that they and we alike must be content to make a common sacrifice... in order to secure the common good. To my appeal they rose. And I cannot believe that here in this country, in the mother country, their enthusiasm will not find an echo. They felt, as I felt, and as you feel, that all history is the history of States once powerful and now decaying. Is Britain to be numbered among the decaying States? Has all the glory of the past to be forgotten? Have we to prove ourselves unregenerate sons of the forefathers who left us so glorious an inheritance? Are we to be a decaying State? Are the efforts of all our sons to be frittered away? Are their sacrifices to be vain? Or are we to take up a new youth as members of a great Empire which will continue for generation after generation, the strength, the power, and the glory of the British race?
“I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men”
Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men; and have ever considered it as the indispensable able duty of every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs; and also, as a faithful subject of the State, to use his utmost endeavors to detect, and having detected, strenuously to oppose every traitorous plot which its enemies may devise for its destruction. Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the sun in enlightening the world; and it cannot be either virtuous or honorable to attempt to support a government of which this is not the great and principal basis; and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government which manifestly tends to render the persons and properties of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.
Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Our Relation To Ourselves http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/counsels/chapter2.html
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Context: Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
"Mariana In The North"; also in Country Life Vol. 50 (1921), p. 738
Orchard and Vineyard (1921)
"City of My Youth" (1984)
Context: It would be more decorous not to live. To live is not decorous,
Says he who after many years
Returned to the city of his youth. There was no one left
Of those who once walked these streets
And now they had nothing, except his eyes.
Stumbling, he walked and looked, instead of them,
On the light they had loved, on the lilacs again in bloom.
Book I : Man at Bay, Ch. 5
Wanderer (1963)
Context: "I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it." What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine — and before we know it our lives are gone.
What does a man need — really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in — and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all — in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? What follows is not a blueprint for the man entombed; not many people find themselves in a situation paying a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year (as if any man is worth that much). But the struggle is relative: it's a lot hard to walk away from an income like that than from a fraction thereof.
In recognition of van Vogt receiving the Grand Master designation in 1996, in The Nebula Awards Vol. 31, as quoted in SF Authors Remember A.E. van Vogt (2000) http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2000/ARTICLES/20000128-03.htm#SF%20Authors%20Remeber%20A.E.%20van%20Vogt
Context: Even the brightest star shines dimly when observed-from too far away. And human memory is notoriously unreliable. And we live in ugly times when all respect for that which has gone before suffers crib death beneath the weight of youthful arrogance and ignorance. But a great nobility has at last, been recognized and lauded. Someone less charitable than I might suggest the honor could have been better appreciated had it not been so tardy, naming its race with a foe that blots joy and destroys short-term memory. But I sing the Talent Electric, and like aft the dark smudges of history, everything but the honor and die achievement remains for the myth-makers.
Alfred E. van Vogt has been awarded the Grand Master trophy of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is not the to first person to receive this singular accolade…given only to those whose right to possess it is beyond argument or mitigation.
Were we in 1946 or even 1956, van Vogt would have already been able to hold the award aloft. Had SFWA existed then and had the greatest living sf authors been polled as to who was the most fecund, the most intriguing, the mast innovative the most influential of their number, Isaac and Arthur and Cyril and Hank Kuttner and Ron Hubbard would all have pointed to the same man, and Bob Heinlein would've given him a thumbs-up. Van Vogt was the pinnacle, the source of power and ideas; the writer to beat. Because he embodied in his astonishing novels and assorted stories what we always say is of prime importance to us in this genre-the much vaunted Sense of Wonder.
Van Vogt was the wellspring of wonder. … That's how important he was. … And then came the dark years during which the man was shamefully agented and overlooked; and even the brightest star loses its piercing light if observed through the thickening mists of time and flawed memory.
Now it is lifetimes later, and the great award has, at last, been presented. To some, less charitable than I, something could be said about a day late and a dollar short, but not I. I am here to sing the Talent Electric, and it is better now than never. He is the Grand Master, A. E. can Vogt, weaver of a thousand ideas per plot-line, creator of alien thoughts and impossible dreams that rival the best ever built by our kind.
This dear, gentlemanly writer whose stories can still kill you with a concept or warm you with a character, now joins the special pantheon.
In Berlin, (March 1821); Book IV, Chapter 1: Berlin – Potsdam – Frederick.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
“If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.”
Part I.
Le Père Goriot (1835)
Context: The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three o'clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 8. Of the Ancient Practice of Painting
Context: When all others had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration, the Priests and the Women alone still remained pure from the pollution of paint.
Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific — call them by what names you will — yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland — a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossom of youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing.
Speech on the opening day of Disneyland (17 July 1955) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf2TMwtCUr4
Context: To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America; with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.
The Positivum. Written between 1910 - 1920.
Context: I, Tivadar Kosztka, who gave up his prime of youth for the rebirth of the world, accepting the call of the invisible Spirit, had a regular civil job, comfort, wealth then … Going to Paris in 1907 I oppositely standed alone in front of millions with only the result of the divine providence, and I beat the vanity of the world hollow, but I haven't killed 10 million people, only sobered them. I haven't made commercials from things, because I didn't care for the pedlar's press; I retired from the world instead, going to the top of the Lebanons, and I painted cedars.
“Thus may the first Principles of sound Politics be fixed in the minds of youth.”
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania (1749), p. 22 http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=franklin_youth&PagePosition=1; the statement relates to the teaching of History as a subject, and the last quoted paragraph concludes with the footnote "†": Public Disputes warm the Imagination, whet the Industry, and strengthen the natural Abilities.
Context: History will also afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publick; the Advantage of a Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition, &c. and the Excellency of the above all others antient or modern.
History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how men and their properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: the Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice &c. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politics be fixed in the minds of youth.
On Historical occasions, Questions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, will naturally arise, and may be put to Youth, which they may debate in Conversation and in Writing. When they ardently desire of Victory, for the Sake of the Praise attending it, they will begin to feel the want, and be sensible of the use of the Use of Logic, or the Art of Reasoning to discover Truth, and of Arguing to defend it, and convince adversaries.
Free Speech and Plain Language (1936)
Context: I had a desultory talk with one devotee of expediency not long ago, a good friend and a thoroughly excellent man. He was all worked up over the activities of Communists and what he called pink Socialists, especially in the colleges and churches. He said they were corrupting the youth, and he was strong for having them coerced into silence. I could not see it that way. I told him it seemed pretty clear that Mr. Jefferson was right when he said that the effect of coercion was "to make one half the people fools and the other half hypocrites, and to support roguery and error all over the earth"; look at Germany and Italy! I thought our youth could manage to bear up under a little corrupting — they always have — and if they were corrupted by Communism, they stood a first-rate chance to get over it, whereas if they grew up fools or hypocrites, they would never get over it.
I added that Mr. Jefferson was right when he said that "it is error alone which needs the support of government; truth can stand by itself." One glance at governments anywhere in the world proves that. Well, then, the surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.
As quoted in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno03.htm#CH3
Context: If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.
"Clowns' Houses"
Clowns' Houses (1918)
Context: p>The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parakeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and whiteAs powder on a mummy's face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
— Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.</p
“O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.”
"Autumn"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)
Context: October's bellowing anger breakes and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outrage men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely-personal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilites swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before my mind's eye. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights which they had achieved, were the friends which could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
Letter to Emily Sellwood, quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, by Hallam T. Tennyson (1897)
Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)
Context: What can be more frightful than a world at-war? Every leaf a battle-field—every flower a Golgotha—in every drop of water pursuit, capture and death. Under every piece of bark, life lying in wait for life. On every blade of grass, something that kills,—something that suffers. Everywhere the strong living on the weak—the superior on the inferior. Everywhere the weak, the insignificant, living on the strong—the inferior on the superior—the highest food for the lowest—man sacrificed for the sake of microbes. Murder universal. Everywhere pain, disease and death—death that does not wait for bent forms and gray hairs, but clutches babes and happy youths. Death that takes the mother from her helpless, dimpled child—death that fills the world with grief and tears. How can the orthodox Christian explain these things?
Source: Founding Address (1876), The Religion of Duty (1905), Ch. 10
Context: Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories. The thinkers and investigators of the world are pledged to no special theory, but feel themselves free to search for the greater truth beyond the utmost limits of present knowledge. So likewise in the field of moral truth, it is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient.
There are two purposes then which we have in view: To secure in the moral and religious life perfect intellectual liberty, and at the same time to secure concert in action. There shall be no shackles upon the mind, no fetters imposed in early youth which the growing man or woman may feel prevented from shaking off, no barrier set up which daring thought may not transcend. And on the other hand there shall be unity of effort, the unity that comes of an end supremely prized and loved, the unity of earnest, morally aspiring persons, engaged in the conflict with moral evil.
“With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.”
"Mute Game", as translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson in Guernica : a magazine of art & politics (June 2007)<!-- Stone Lyre (2010) -->
Context: With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.
With my lips today,
With my lips alone…
“In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;
But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discolored sickness, anxious labor, come,
And age, and death's inexorable doom.”
Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
Et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis.
Book III, lines 66–68 (tr. John Dryden).
Georgics (29 BC)
Seton Hall Address (2002)
Context: It is customary at occasions such as this for some old person to pass on his accumulated pearls of wisdom and life story to the young.
But this is not a customary year. It is a year marked by distinctive tragedy and challenge, by events that no one at last year’s commencement ceremony could have possibly anticipated. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took the lives of so many — Seton Hall graduates among them — and have affected us so deeply that it is impossible to speak here today without acknowledging the witness to tragedy which this University and its students have borne.
These events delivered a four-fold shock to us and our country. The shock of our country, under attack. The shock that others would hate so much that they would kill themselves to hurt us. The shock of death to the youthful and innocent. The shock that the murderers would claim to have acted in the name of God.
Manuel, in Ch. I : How Manuel Left the Mire
Figures of Earth (1921)
Context: I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon.
Jung and the Writer (1989).
Context: The most dismaying call of this kind came one night at nine o'clock from a youth of sixteen who said: "I've got to have this essay ready to hand in tomorrow morning, and I'm stuck. Can you give me some help with these-here Jungian archeotypes?" It was impossible to explain to him that no telephone conversation could help him; indeed, in his agony, I do not know what would have helped him except sudden and merciful death.
The Color Curtain (1956)
Interview with Oriana Fallaci as reported in The Chicago Tribune (24 June 1973) (Excerpts online) http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=int_ori.
Context: It is obvious that We have been young. We weren't born old! We have been a child, a boy, a youth, an adult, and finally an old man. Like everyone else. Our Lord the Creator made us like everyone else. Maybe you wish to know what kind of youth We were. Well We were a very serious, very diligent, very obedient youth. We were sometimes punished, but do you know why? Because what We were made to study did not seem enough and We wished to study further. We wanted to stay on at school after lessons were over. We were loath to amuse ourselves, to go riding, to play. We didn't want to waste time on games.
Dostoyevsky, in a letter to Katkov, the reactionary editor of The Moscow Herald, in which The Brothers Karamazov was serialized
As quoted by David Magarshack in his 1958 translation of The Brothers Karamazov
Context: The modern negationist declares himself declares himself openly in favour of the devil's advice and maintains that it is more likely to result in man's happiness than the teachings of Christ. To our foolish but terrible Russian socialism (for our youth is mixed up in it) it is a directive and, it seems, a very powerful one: the loaves of bread, the Tower of Babel (that is, the future reign of socialism) and the complete enslavement of the freedom of conscience - that is what the desperate negationist is striving to achieve. The difference is, that our socialists (and they are not only the hole-and-corner nihilists) are conscious Jesuits and liars who do not admit that their ideal is the ideal of the coercion of the human conscience and the reduction of mankind to the level of cattle. While my socialist (Ivan Karamazov) is a sincere man who frankly admits that he agrees with the views of the Grand Inquisitor and that Christianity seems to have raised man much higher than his actual position entitles him. The question I should like to put to them is, in a nutshell, this: "Do you despise or do you respect mankind, you - its future saviours?"
“Believe, youth, despite all temptations, the oracle of deity in your own bosom.”
I. SPIRIT, 6. Oracle
Orphic Sayings
Context: Believe, youth, despite all temptations, the oracle of deity in your own bosom. ’T is the breath of God’s revelations,—the respiration of the Holy Ghost in your breast. Be faithful, not infidel, to its intuitions,—quench never its spirit,—dwell ever in its omniscience. So shall your soul be filled with light, and God be an indwelling fact,—a presence in the depths of your being.
"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like my little tales.... Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must give people what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 58 : A prophetical Riddle-->
Context: Then shall you many gallant men see by
Valour stirr'd up, and youthful fervency,
Who, trusting too much in their hopeful time,
Live but a while, and perish in their prime.
Neither shall any, who this course shall run,
Leave off the race which he hath once begun,
Till they the heavens with noise by their contention
Have fill'd, and with their steps the earth's dimension.
Then those shall have no less authority,
That have no faith, than those that will not lie;
For all shall be governed by a rude,
Base, ignorant, and foolish multitude;
The veriest lout of all shall be their judge,
O horrible and dangerous deluge!
"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism
Context: In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI
Context: What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.
Book II, 1103b
Nicomachean Ethics
Idyll 29; lines 27-28; translation by C. S. Calverley, from Theocritus, translated into English Verse.
Idylls
Just what part of America had he visited, I asked. "The South Side of Chicago," he said.
Give War a Chance (1992)
