“Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.”
Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 196)
Speech delivered at the Yad Vashem Museum at Jerusalem, Israel - March 23, 2000 http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/yad_vashem.htm
“Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.”
Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 196)
“God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.”
nullum contemptu m[ortis incitamentum] ad uincendum homini ab dis immortalibus acrius datum est.
As quoted by Livy, :la:s:Ab Urbe Condita/liber XXI 44, as translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt, in The War with Hannibal (1965).
Reported by Brand Blanshard in 'Francis Herbert Bradley', Journal of Philosophy (1925).
Original text: Les despotes eux-mêmes ne nient pas que la liberté ne soit excellente ; seulement ils ne la veulent que pour eux-mêmes, et ils soutiennent que tous les autres en sont tout à fait indignes. Ainsi, ce n'est pas sur l'opinion qu'on doit avoir de la liberté qu'on diffère, mais sur l'estime plus au moins grande qu'on fait des hommes ; et c'est ainsi qu'on peut dire d'une façon rigoureuse que le goût qu'on montre pour le gouvernement absolu est dans le rapport exact du mépris qu'on professe pour son pays.
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution) (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan, Penguin UK (2008), Author’s Foreword :
1850s and later
Variant: We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Context: Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
“Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.”
Notebook L (1945) edited by Edmund Wilson
Quoted, Notebooks
Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 2 : The Stain and the Stone
Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)
The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 11-12
Note of 1944; as quoted in the Charles Ives profile at Decca Classics http://www.deccaclassics.com/music/composers/ives.html
1940s