“The word of man is the most durable of all material.”
Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena
Vol. 2, Ch. 25, sect. 298
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter III, Sec. 2
Context: All... must be built with due reference to durability, convenience, and beauty. Durability will be assured when foundations are carried down to the solid ground and materials wisely and liberally selected; convenience, when the arrangement of the apartments is faultless and presents no hindrance to use, and when each class of building is assigned to its suitable and appropriate exposure; and beauty, when the appearance of the work is pleasing and in good taste, and when its members are in due proportion according to correct principles of symmetry.
“The word of man is the most durable of all material.”
Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena
Vol. 2, Ch. 25, sect. 298
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
“It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe that there are.”
Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus.
Ovid book Ars amatoria
Book I, line 637
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
Bram Stoker book Dracula
The Keeper in the Zoological Gardens
Source: Dracula (1897)
Context: I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.
Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist
Discussion to ‘Statistics in agricultural research’ by J.Wishart, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Supplement, 1, 26-61, 1934.
1930s
“Nobody is forgotten, when it is convenient to remember him.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Letter to Lord Stanhope (17 July 1870), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 5 (1920), p. 123-125.
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])
Emperor Norton (1811–1880) Self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States
Proclamation published in the Pacific Appeal (23 March 1872)
Context: The following is decreed and ordered to be carried into execution as soon as convenient:
I. That a suspension bridge be built from Oakland Point to Goat Island, and then to Telegraph Hill; provided such bridge can be built without injury to the navigable waters of the Bay of San Francisco.
II. That the Central Pacific Railroad Company be granted franchises to lay down tracks and run cars from Telegraph Hill and along the city front to Mission Bay.
III. That all deeds by the Washington Government since the establishment of our Empire are hereby decreed null and void unless our Imperial signature is first obtained thereto.
George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention
Letter to George Washington (5 April 1769)