
12 October 1859 (p. 388)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)
Se l'arte dell'eloquenza è l'arte di persuadere, non vi è altra eloquenza che quella di dire sempre il vero, il solo vero, il nudo vero. Le parole, onde è necessità di nostra inferma natura di rivestire il pensiero, saranno tanto più potenti, quanto più atte al fine, cioè più nudo lasceranno il vero, che è nel pensiero.
Platone in Italia
Se l'arte dell'eloquenza è l'arte di persuadere, non vi è altra eloquenza che quella di dire sempre il vero, il solo vero, il nudo vero. Le parole, onde è necessità di nostra inferma natura di rivestire il pensiero, saranno tanto più potenti, quanto più atte al fine, cioè più nudo lasceranno il vero, che è nel pensiero.
da Platone in Italia
12 October 1859 (p. 388)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)
In Search of a Better World (1984)
Context: Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.
Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point.
Variant translation: The passions are the only orators who always persuade. They are like a natural art, of which the rules are unfailing; and the simplest man who has passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent man who has none.
Maxim 8.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?”
Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (1866), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal
“1200. Craft must have Clothes; but Truth loves to go naked.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Context: Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.
All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry problems, all clumsiness of style, and all faulty connection of ideas in compositions and essays, all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily, and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth.
“No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.”
Canto III, stanza 22.
The Corsair (1814)
“Shepherd: Men are more eloquent than women made.
Nymph: But women are more powerful to persuade.”
Amyntas; or, The Impossible Dowry (1630; pub. 1638), Prologue