Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher, nor suffer others to call you so. Say rather: He is in error; for my desires, my impulses are unaltered. I give in my adhesion to what I did before; nor had my mode of dealing with the things of sense undergone any change. (109).
As she spoke, Jane became convinced that she herself would never willingly die for a principle. She might feel guilty about it, but she’d smile and lie, knuckle under, pretend, anything, in order to survive. It made her feel a little sad to realize this, but also, at the same time, very adult.
Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 15 (p. 263)
Quoted in Degas' letter to Daniel Halévy, 31 Jan 1892, from Degas Letters, ed. Marcel Guerin, trans. Marguerite Kay (1947)
1876 - 1895
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
“Wisdom and good governance require more than the consistent application of abstract principles.”
Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)
Act I
What Every Woman Knows (1908)
“I also believe there is nothing more surreal and nothing more abstract than reality.”
from an interview, 1955; as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 38
1945 - 1964
“Women care about specifics, about details. Men care about generalities, about abstract principles.”
Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 153-154
Original: (it) Sei intelligente, dolce, elegante, affascinante, erotica, sensuale e trasgressiva. Sei tutto ciò che crea una seduzione ossessiva.
Source: prevale.net
“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”
Dr. Théophile de Bordeu, in “Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot”
D’Alembert’s Dream (1769)
