
“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”
St. 22.
The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842)
“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”
“And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 57.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 319.
Naming and Necessity (1980, p. 291)
Context: If I use the name 'Hesperus' to refer to a certain planetary body when seen in a certain celestial position in the evening, it will not therefore be a necessary truth that Hesperus is ever seen in the evening. That depends on various contingent facts about people being there to see and things like that. So even if I should say to myself that I will use 'Hesperus' to name the heavenly body I see in the evening in yonder position of the sky, it will not be necessary that Hesperus was ever seen in the evening. But it may be a priori in that this is how I have determined the referent.
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 171.
“Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.”
Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 87. This quote ends with an oft quoted aphorism: Jeder Ruf Christi fährt in den Tod.
Variant translations:
Every call of Christ leads into death.
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Context: The Cross is not the terrible end of a pious happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.
Source: How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_how_we_re_growing_baby_corals_to_rebuild_reefs (October 2015)
“But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.”
Act II, scene i.
Manfred (1817)
Context: Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore
Innumerable atoms; and one desert
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.