
Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 181
Human nature is evil
167.
On the Virtues
Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 181
Human nature is evil
“Nature gives beauty; fortune, wealth in vain.”
Book XVI, stanza 65
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 467
Sunni Hadith
“I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?”
1846
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: If I were to imagine a girl deeply in love and some man who wanted to use all his reasoning powers and knowledge to ridicule her passion, well, there's surely no question of the enamoured girl having to choose between keeping her wealth and being ridiculed. No, but if some extremely cool and calculating man calmly told the young girl, "I will explain to you what love is," and the girl admitted that everything he told her was quite correct, I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?
“The lust of lucre has so totally seized upon mankind, that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth.”
Ea invasit homines habendi cupido, ut possideri magis quam possidere videantur.
Letter 30, 4.
Letters, Book IX
“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”
fr. 132
Variant translations:
Blessed is he who has acquired a wealth of divine wisdom, but miserable is he in whom there rests a dim opinion concerning the gods.
tr. Arthur Fairbanks
Purifications
Source: Fairbanks, Arthur. (1898). The First Philosophers of Greece https://archive.org/stream/cu31924029013162. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd. p. 201.
“…in order to change poverty into wealth, one must start by displaying it.”
(420).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)