
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
Lord Darlington, Act I
Variant: I can resist everything except temptation
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 8.
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
Lord Darlington, Act I
Variant: I can resist everything except temptation
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 124
Context: After his victory at the Milvian Bridge, faithful to his promise, Constantine favors the church from which he has received support. Catholic Christianity becomes the state religion and an exchange takes place: the church is invested with political power, and it invests the emperor with religious power. We have here the same perversion, for how can Jesus manifest himself in the power of domination and constraint? We have to say here very forcefully that we see here the perversion of revelation by participation in politics, by the seeking of power. The church lets itself be seduced, invaded, dominated by the ease with which it can now spread the gospel by force (another force than that of God) and use its influence to make the state, too, Christian. It is great acquiescence to the temptation Jesus himself resisted, for when Satan offers to give him all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus refuses, but the church accepts.
“A war is never undertaken by the ideal state, except in defense of its honor or its safety.”
Nullum bellum suscipi a civitate optima nisi aut pro fide aut pro salute.
De Re Publica, Book 3, Chapter 23
"On Medicine, (c. 1020) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1020Avicenna-Medicine.html
Context: The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.
Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965
Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XVII, Section I, p. 168
“Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin.”
‘Village Communities’ (3rd ed., 1876) p. 238.