“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book X
From the Cenotaph at the Isthmos
“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book X
“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”
X. 173–174 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
“But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...
“Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Shelter from the Storm
Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being
pg 51
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body
Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
Vintage, p. 41
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Pierre Sonnerat (1748–1814) French botanist (1748-1814)
Pierre Sonnerat: Voyage aux Indes orientales et a la Chine, Paris, 1782. Quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Other Scholars, by Stephen Knapp https://www.stephen-knapp.com/a_look_at_india_from_the_views_of_other_scholars.htm <br class="br">Source: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Tribute_to_Hinduism.html?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ