
“From a few basic rules you can generate a cosmos.”
Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
Peu de généreux vont jusqu'à dédaigner,
Après un sceptre acquis, la douceur de régner.
Maxime, act II, scene i.
Cinna (1641)
Peu de généreux vont jusqu'à dédaigner, Après un sceptre acquis, la douceur de régner.
Cinna (1641)
“From a few basic rules you can generate a cosmos.”
Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
Variant: Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely.
Source: Jill Kargman Arm Candy: A Novel http://books.google.co.in/books?id=EVg6b7fFXUEC&pg=PT99, Penguin, 13 May 2010, p. 99
“Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.”
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words. We shall, however, when occasion demands, enter into discourse sparingly, avoiding such common topics as gladiators, horse-races, athletes; and the perpetual talk about food and drink. Above all avoid speaking of persons, either in the way of praise or blame, or comparison. If you can, win over the conversation of your company to what it should be by your own. But if you should find yourself cut off without escape among strangers and aliens, be silent. (164).
“The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.”
Source: The Story of My Life
The Old Sexton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Rule, after you have first learned to submit to rule.”
Diogenes Laërtius (trans. C. D. Yonge) The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853), "Solon", sect. 12, p. 29.
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
“No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.”
Section 2, member 2, subsection 3, Custom of Diet, Delight, Appetite, Necessity, how they cause or hinder.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I
As quoted in Communications and History : Theories of Knowledge, Media and Civilization (1988) by Paul Heyer, p. 125