The Creation, st. 6.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
“The sweetest teaching did he introduce,
Concealing truth under untrue speech.
The place he spoke of as the gods' abode
Was that by which he might awe humans most, —
The place from which, he knew, terrors came to mortals
And things advantageous in their wearisome life —
The revolving heaven above, in which dwell
The lightnings, and awesome claps
Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,
Beautiful and intricate by that wise craftsman Time, —
From which, too, the meteor's glowing mass speeds
And wet thunderstorm pours forth upon the earth.”
Sisyphus as translated by R. G. Bury, and revised by J. Garrett
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Euripidés 116
ancient Athenian playwright -480–-406 BCRelated quotes
Source: Character of the Happy Warrior http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww302.html (1806), Line 48.
“He seized the lightning from Heaven and the scepter from the Tyrants.”
Eripuit Coelo fulmen, mox Sceptra Tyrannis.
Statement in Latin about Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review, Vol. X (March 1811) http://books.google.com/books?id=Q-ERAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA167&dq=%22Eripuit+Coelo+fulmen+sceptrumque+tyrannis%22&ei=YyJvScTUG5HKMuCSgMwM. This has also been quoted in several other variants of Latin or French expression, and been translated into English in various ways. Though it has probably incorrectly been cited as a remark of 1775, the earliest published reference to it appears to have occurred in April 1778.
Variants:
Eripuit fulmen coelo, mox sceptra tyrannis.
Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis.
He snatched lightning from the heavens and the scepter from the tyrants.
He snatched lightning from the sky and scepters from tyrants.
“We all conceal
A god within us, we all deal
With heaven direct, from whose high places we derive
The inspiration by which we live.”
Est deus in nobis, et sunt commercia caeli:
Sedibus aetheriis spiritus ille venit.
Book III, lines 549–550 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 49.
1 Peter 1:25
Heaven Taken By Storm
Thus he ranks himself with finite beings, and with them acknowledges, that he did not know the day and hour of judgment, and at the same time ascribes a superiority of knowledge to the father, for that he knew the day and hour of judgment.
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IX Section III - The Imperfection of Knowledge in the Person of Jesus Christ, incompatible with his Divinity
“The mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells.”