
Section 1.1, "Labor"
Workers Councils (1947)
"A Poet of the Actual", p. 266
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
Section 1.1, "Labor"
Workers Councils (1947)
“Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.”
La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix.
Maxim 592 in Reflections and Maxims (1746), as translated by F. G. Stevens.
“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 74
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“Let us accept Necessity courageously.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor — we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit!
Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle!
“How dismal the necessity of birth! how miserable the necessity of living! how hard the necessity of death!”
O neccessitas abiecta nascendi, vivendi misera dura moriendi.
Lib. 8, Ep. 11, sect. 4; vol. 2, p. 463.
Epistularum
“Even if work were not an economic necessity, it is a spiritual necessity.”