Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.
Book I, Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book I
Sec. 206
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.
Book I, Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book I
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
1900s, The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Context: There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this campaigning life at all, — this is capable of arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now — and this is my idea — there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life.
Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
As quoted in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review by ? Vol. IV, No. 8 (1847) by Dallas Theological Seminary, p. 107
Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 25)
“So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?”
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist
“Voroshilov was a hard-riding, hard-drinking military crony of civil-war days.”
Kliment Voroshilov (1881–1969) Soviet military commander
Alec Nove
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana
“And yet it is hard to believe that anything
in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.
The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,
like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire;
red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam;
hard gold is softened and melted down by heat;
chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid;
heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;
by custom raising the cup, we feel them both
as water is poured in, drop by drop, above.”
Etsi difficiile esse videtur credere quicquam
in rebus solido reperiri corpore posse.
transit enim fulmen caeli per saepta domorum,
clamor ut ad voces; flamen candescit in igni
dissiliuntque ferre ferventi saxa vapore.
tum labefactatus rigor auri solvitur aestu;
tum glacies aeris flamma devicta liquescit;
permanat calor argentum penetraleque frigus
quando utrumque manu retinentes pocula rite
sensimus infuso lympharum rore superne.
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book I, lines 487–496 (Frank O. Copley)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)