Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux
“Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book III: The Castle of Llyr (1966), Chapter 1
Source: The Black Cauldron
Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 79.
“There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles”
Source: The Way of Zen (1957), p. 29
Context: It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or "human-heartedness" (jen) was always felt to be superior to "righteousness" (i), since man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent. There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles.
“Cricket to us, like you, was more than play,
It was a worship in the summer sun.”
Poem Pride of the Village (1925)
“Seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he may be taller than other men.”
Variant translation: He will give him seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he may be taller than other men.
Attributed by the Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241) in his Saga of Harald Hardrade.
1066, when asked by his traitorous brother, Tostig, how much of England he was prepared to give up to the invading King Harald Hardrada of Norway
Attributed
Paul Tanner, in "Free Women: 1"<!-- p. 173 -->
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.
