Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)
“Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?”
asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)
“Finally she resorts to the oldest tactic of all, telling the truth.”
Source: Mother of Storms (1994), pp. 545-546
Sec. 29
The Gay Science (1882)
“Designers should only innovate as a last resort.”
Source: Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. 1998, p. 373: Attributed to Charles Eames
J 65
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)
Context: A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem even easier. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being. That is why we devise genera and species in the case of plants and animals. The hypotheses we make belong here too: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would unable to retain things... The question is, however, whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment and reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introducion of symmetries belongs here too, silhouettes in inkblots, etc. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: all this is not in the things but in us. In general we cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
“Violence is stupid. Even as a last resort, it only ever begets more of the same.”
Source: Saga, Vol. 1
Other
