
V, 8
The Persian Bayán
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)
Context: Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles. We know that the Supreme Ruler cannot have a seat so narrow, so miserable a throne, so trivial, so scanty a court, so small and feeble a simulacrum that phantasm can bring to birth, a dream shatter, a delusion restore, a calamity diminish, a misdeed abolish and a thought renew it again, so that indeed with a puff of air it were brimful and with a single gulp it were emptied. On the contrary we recognize a noble image, a marvellous conception, a supreme figure, an exalted shadow, an infinite representation of the represented infinity, a spectacle worthy of the excellence and supremacy of Him who transcendeth understanding, comprehension or grasp. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.
V, 8
The Persian Bayán
Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 48 from Frederick to Voltaire (1740-01-06)
Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 1, I'll Be Back, p. 13
“Fighting single-handed for a thousand miles,
With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude.”
"Song of an Old General" http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wang_wei/poems/11147.html (老将行)
"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)
Context: Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
To rise before me — Rise, oh, ever rise;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
“God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Laozi in the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64
Misattributed, Chinese
Lectures to My Students
“Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.”
Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear