
“It’s one thing to have guts; it’s another to be crazy.”
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 15 “Gaia-S” section 2, p. 302
Of the Tongues of Pigs and Calves in Sausage-skins.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
“It’s one thing to have guts; it’s another to be crazy.”
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 15 “Gaia-S” section 2, p. 302
“See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death.”
Vide, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant; ipsi enim invicem oderunt: et ut pro alterutro mori sint parati; ipsi enim ad occidendum alterutrum paratiores erunt.
Source: Apologeticus pro Christianis, Chapter 39, describing how Christianity is mocked by its enemies.
“Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another”
X, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise thyself about this part [of philosophy]. For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity.... But as to what any man shall say or think about him, or do against him, he never even thinks of it, being himself contented with these two things: with acting justly in what he now does, and being satisfied with what is now assigned to him; and he lays aside all distracting and busy pursuits, and desires nothing else than to accomplish the straight course through the law, and by accomplishing the straight course to follow God.
Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 4, p. 68
“We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.”
Ancient Work
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature
Context: If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.
Book B (sketchbook), c 1967: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 62
1960s
“When we know clearly, then should we discuss:
To guess is one thing, and to know another.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1368–1369 (tr. E. H. Plumptre)
[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 312]