Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship
Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 378-382.
“O impotence of man's frail mind
To fate and to the future blind,
Presumptuous and o'erweening still
When Fortune follows at its will!”
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book X, p. 369
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To fate and to the future blind,
Presumptuous and o'erweening still
When Fortune fol…" by John Conington?
John Conington85
British classical scholar 1825–1869Related quotes
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
During an interview with H. R.<!-- Hubert Renfro --> Knickerbocker (1939), quoted in A Life of Jung (2002) by Ronald Hayman, p. 360
Variant: No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps.
Context: No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps. A nation has no honour, it has no word to keep. … Hitler is himself the nation. That incidentally is why Hitler always has to talk so loud, even in private conversation — because he is speaking with 78 million voices.
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher
Man in the Modern Age (1933)
Context: The vicious circle of dread of war which leads the nations to arm themselves for self-protection, with the result that bloated armaments ultimately lead to the war which they were intended to avert, can be broken in either of two conceivable ways. There might arise a unique world power, brought into being by the unification of all those now in possession of weapons, and equipped with the capacity to forbid the lesser and unarmed nations to make war. On the other hand, it may arise by the working of a fate to us still inscrutable which, out of ruin, will disclose a way towards the development of a new human being. To will the discovery of this way would be blind impotence, but those who do not wish to deceive themselves will be prepared for the possibility.<!-- p. 97
Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher
Feeling and Form, ch. 19, Scribner (1953)
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
" Total Eclipse https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/", Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)
“Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Fate http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20569&c=323 <br class="br">1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
“As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.”
Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America
Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Book Four, Chapter VIII
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four