“Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.”
As translated in Michael John Petry (2001), in Nemesis Divina: (Edited and Translated with Explanatory Notes by M.J. Petry); Springer. p. 21
The excerpt was republished in Latin by Linnaues himself, in Systema Naturae ed. (1788) http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=Z3PVJQMIhboC&pg=PA5&dq=%22Crentorem+oinniputentem+,+omnifcium+%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ei=QyjYUuWnE8TrkQenv4DoBw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Crentorem%20oinniputentem%20%2C%20omnifcium%20%22&f=false: ""Theologice: Te ultimum finem creationis; In Telluris globum, Omnipotentis magisterium, introductum; ratione sapiente, secundum senfus concludente, mundi contemplatorem: ut ex opere agnosceres Creatorem omnipotentem, omniscium, immensum & sempiternum DEum, cujus sub imperio quod moraliter vivas, a justissima ejus Nemesi convicaris."
Nemesis Divina (1734)
Roger Sherman Loomis The Development of Arthurian Romance (New York: Dover, [1963] 2000) p. 67.
Criticism
Source: On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas, P.E.Keay in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 35
“Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.”
“Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.”
Source: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology
1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: To understand life, and love it to its depths in a living being, that is the being's task, and that his masterpiece; and each of us can hardly occupy his time so greatly as with one other; we have only one true neighbor down here.
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
