“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
... il n'est rien creu si fermement que ce qu'on sçait le moins, ...
Book I, Ch. 31
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
Source: The Complete Essays
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing. With this account of philosophy there is no need to quarrel. But having accepted it, a distinction remains to be observed, a distinction of capital importance, which we are in constant danger of forgetting. It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever.
American Girl
Lyrics, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1974)
“Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;
Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.”
"Seek and Find". Compare: "Nil tam difficilest quin quærendo investigari possiet" (transalted as "Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking"), Terence, Heautontimoroumenos, iv. 2, 8.
Hesperides (1648)
“There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”
“The Evitable Conflict”, p. 189
Source: I, Robot (1950)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 348.
