“Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.”
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John Calvin 161
French Protestant reformer 1509–1564Related quotes
“A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.”
Magnus gubernator et scisso navigat velo.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXX: On conquering the conqueror, Line 3.
“But physicians also cure more desperate maladies by harsh remedies, and a pilot, when he fears shipwreck, rescues by jettison whatever can be saved.”
Sed medici quoque graviores morbos asperis remediis curant, et gubernator, ubi nafraugium timet, iactura quidquid servari potest redimit.
V, 9, 3; translation by John Carew Rolfe
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book V
1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)
“Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.”
Source: The Professor (1857), Ch. XIX
“Thus I steer my bark, and sail
On even keel, with gentle gale.”
The Spleen (1737)
The Christian Year. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Translated by Edward Rosen, Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger (1965), p. 39
Unsourced variant translation: Provide ships or sails fit for the winds of heaven, and some will brave even that great void.
Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (1610)
Context: It is not improbable, I must point out, that there are inhabitants not only on the moon but on Jupiter too, or (as was delightfully remarked at a recent gathering of certain philosophers) that those areas are now being unveiled for the first time. But as soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking. Who would once have thought that the crossing of the wide ocean was calmer and safer than of the narrow Adriatic Sea, Baltic Sea, or English Channel? Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse. Therefore, for the sake of those who, as it were, will presently be on hand to attempt this voyage, let us establish the astronomy, Galileo, you of Jupiter, and me of the moon.
