"Dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians"; a portion of this statement is often quoted alone as simply "All we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.
De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (1628)
Context: Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. But even as they see that the credulous and vain are disposed at the first blush to accept and believe everything that is proposed to them, so do they observe that the dull and unintellectual are indisposed to see what lies before their eyes, and even deny the light of the noon-day sun.
Quotes about sight
page 12
Source: Into the Green (1993), p. 26; This has also been misquoted as "The few wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them."
Vol 3, Pg 71-73, Translated by W.P. Dickson
On the Roman government before the Ghracci brothers and the spread of decay within it.
The History of Rome - Volume 3
Context: For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion extended over three continents; the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful prosperity and intellectual enjoyment of life had there begun. The Orientals of this period told each other with astonishment of the might republic of the West,'which subdued kingdoms far and near, so that everyone who heard its name trembled; but which kept good faith with its friends and clients. Such was the glory of the Romans, and yet no one usurped the crown and no one glittered in purple dress; but they obeyed whomsoever from year to year they made their master, and there was among them neither envy nor discord.'So it seemed at a distance; matters wore a different aspect on a closer view. The government of the aristocracy was in full train to destroy its own work. Not that the sons and grandsons of the vanquished at Cannae and Zama had so utterly degenerated from their fathers and grandfathers; the difference was not so much in the men who now sat in the Senate as in the times. Where a limited number of old families of established wealth and hereditary political importance conducts the government, it will display in seasons of danger an incomparable tenacity of purpose and power of heroic self-sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquility it will be short-sighted, selfish, and negligent; the germs of both results are essentially involved in its hereditary and collegiate character. The morbid matter had been long in existence, but it needed the sun of prosperity to develop it. There was a profound meaning in the question of Cato, "What was to become of Rome, when she should no longer have any state to fear?" that point had now been reached. Every neighbor whom she might have feared was politically annihilated; and of the men, who had been reared under the older order of things in the severe school of the Hannibalic War, and whose words still sounded as echoes of that mighty epoch so long as they survived, death called on after another away, till at length the voice of the last of them, the Veteran Cato, ceased to be heard in the Senate-house and in the Forum. A younger generation came to the helm, and their policy was a sorry answer to that of the question of the veteran patriot. We have already spoken the shape which the government of the subjects and external policy of rome assumed in their hands. In internal affairs they were, if possible, still more disposed to let the ship drive before the wind: if we understand by internal government more than the transaction of current business, there was at this period no government in Rome at all. The single leading thought of the governing corporation was the maintenance and, if possible, the increase of their usurped privileges. It was not the state that had a title to get the right and the best man for its supreme magistracy; but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest office of the state - a title not to be prejudiced by the unfair rivalry of his peers or by the encroachments of the excluded. Accordingly the clique proposed to itself as its most important political aim, the restriction of reelection to the consulship and the exclusion of "new men;" and in fact succeeded in obtaining the legal prohibition of the former about (165) and contented itself with a government of aristocratic nobodies. Even the inaction of the government in its outward relations was doubtless connected with this policy of the nobility, exclusive towards commoners, and distrustful towards the individual members of their own order. By no surer means could they keep commoners, whose deeds were their patent of nobility, aloof from the pure circles of the aristocracy than by giving no opportunity to any one to perform deeds at all...
“I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant.”
Comments to James H. Wilson (22 October 1864), as quoted in Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, etc Vol. 2 (1912) by James Harrison Wilson, p. 17.
1860s, 1864
Context: I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant. I know more about military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does. I know more about supply, administration, and everything else than he does. I'll tell you where he beats me though and where he beats the world. He doesn't give a damn about what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell. … I am more nervous than he is. I am more likely to change my orders or to countermarch my command than he is. He uses such information as he has according to his best judgment; he issues his orders and does his level best to carry them out without much reference to what is going on about him and, so far, experience seems to have fully justified him.
As quoted in Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (2002) by Douglas Allen, p. 90.
Context: It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.
Summations, Chapter 52
Context: In our intent we abide in God, and faithfully trust to have mercy and grace; and this is His own working in us. And of His goodness He openeth the eye of our understanding, by which we have sight, sometime more and sometime less, according as God giveth ability to receive. And now we are raised into the one, and now we are suffered to fall into the other.
And thus is this medley so marvellous in us that scarsely we know of our self or of our even-Christian in what way we stand, for the marvellousness of this sundry feeling.
The Renaissance in India (1918)
Context: Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, — and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, — that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organize the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, — truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.
She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman.
An Essay on the Beautiful
Context: What measures, then, shall we adopt? What machine employ, or what reason consult by means of which we may contemplate this ineffable beauty; a beauty abiding in the most divine sanctuary without ever proceeding from its sacred retreats lest it should be beheld by the profane and vulgar eye? We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. For, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images, vestiges and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived. For he who rushes to these lower beauties, as if grasping realities, when they are only like beautiful images appearing in water, will, doubtless, like him in the fable, by stretching after the shadow, sink into the lake and disappear. For, by thus embracing and adhering to corporeal forms, he is precipitated, not so much in his body as in his soul, into profound and horrid darkness; and thus blind, like those in the infernal regions, converses only with phantoms, deprived of the perception of what is real and true.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)
Context: The Indian refuses civilization; the African slave is rendered unfit for it.
But cher Monsieur: You saw the Indian sitting beside the African on a drape of baize. They were easy together. The sight of them together does not lead you to wonder about a history in which you are not the narrator?
These women are but parables of your interest in yourself. Rather than consider the nature of their intimacy, you are preoccupied alone with the meaning of your intrusion.
"Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (1949)
Context: I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone
Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings,
Like watery words awash; like meanings said
By repetitions of half-meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half a figure of a sort,
A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition appareled in
Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulders and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?
“Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.”
"Conversation with a Stone".
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Context: No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be,
only its seed, imagination.
Comments to James H. Wilson (22 October 1864), as quoted in Under the Old Flag: Recollections of Military Operations in the War for the Union, the Spanish War, the Boxer Rebellion, etc Vol. 2 (1912) by James Harrison Wilson, p. 17.
1860s, 1864
Context: I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant. I know more about military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does. I know more about supply, administration, and everything else than he does. I'll tell you where he beats me though and where he beats the world. He doesn't give a damn about what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell. … I am more nervous than he is. I am more likely to change my orders or to countermarch my command than he is. He uses such information as he has according to his best judgment; he issues his orders and does his level best to carry them out without much reference to what is going on about him and, so far, experience seems to have fully justified him.
The Twelfth Revelation, Chapter 26
Context: After this our Lord shewed Himself more glorified, as to my sight, than I saw Him before wherein I was learned that our soul shall never have rest till it cometh to Him, knowing that He is fulness of joy, homely and courteous, blissful and very life.
Our Lord Jesus oftentimes said: I IT AM, I IT AM: I IT AM that is highest, I IT AM that thou lovest, I IT AM that thou enjoyest, I IT AM that thou servest, I IT AM that thou longest for, I IT AM that thou desirest, I IT AM that thou meanest, I IT AM that is all. I IT AM that Holy Church preacheth and teacheth thee, I IT AM that shewed me here to thee. The number of the words passeth my wit and all my understanding and all my powers. And they are the highest, as to my sight: for therein is comprehended — I cannot tell, — but the joy that I saw in the Shewing of them passeth all that heart may wish for and soul may desire. Therefore the words be not declared here; but every man after the grace that God giveth him in understanding and loving, receive them in our Lord’s meaning.
I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors and blemishes of a book rendered venerable to me by intrinsic wisdom and imperishable associations. But...when its passages are invoked to justify the imposition of a yoke, irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence to be critical.
New Fragments (1892)
Foreword http://www.psychedelic-library.org/childf.htm
LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: There are experiences that most of us are hesitant to speak about, because they do not conform to everyday reality and defy rational explanation. These are not particular external occurrences, but rather events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds.
One enchantment of that kind, which I experienced in childhood, has remained remarkably vivid in my memory ever since. It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden, Switzerland. As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light. Was this something I had simply failed to notice before? Was I suddenly discovering the spring forest as it actually looked? It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness, and blissful security.
I have no idea how long I stood there spellbound. But I recall the anxious concern I felt as the radiance slowly dissolved and I hiked on: how could a vision that was so real and convincing, so directly and deeply felt — how could it end so soon? And how could I tell anyone about it, as my overflowing joy compelled me to do, since I knew there were no words to describe what I had seen? It seemed strange that I, as a child, had seen something so marvelous, something that adults obviously did not perceive — for I had never heard them mention it.
While still a child, I experienced several more of these deeply euphoric moments on my rambles through forest and meadow. It was these experiences that shaped the main outlines of my world view and convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight.
Source: Samson Agonistes (1671), Lines 1687-1692 & 1697-1707
Context: But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[... ]
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.
Introductory poem.
Poems (1869)
Context: These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,
With dear companions now passed out of sight,
Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live,
Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride
Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts
Will meet the offering, of so little worth,
Wanting the benison death has made divine.
The Golden Man (1954)
Context: He was always moving, advancing into new regions he had never seen before. A constantly unfolding panorama of sights and scenes, frozen landscapes spread out ahead. All objects were fixed. Pieces on a vast chess board through which he moved, arms folded, face calm. A detached observer who saw objects that lay ahead of him as clearly as those under foot.
Right now, as he crouched in the small supply closet, he saw an unusually varied multitude of scenes for the next half hour. Much lay ahead. The half hour was divided into an incredibly complex pattern of separate configurations. He had reached a critical region; he was about to move through worlds of intricate complexity.
“Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.”
"The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196
Variant translations or adaptations:
Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in Teachers of Wisdom (2010) by Igor Kononenko, p. 134
Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in "Rumi’s wisdom" (2 October 2015) http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/10/02/character-of-the-week-rumi/, by Paulo Coelho
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.
On the Uses and Transformations of Linear Algebra (1875)
Context: Some definite interpretation of a linear algebra would, at first sight, appear indispensable to its successful application. But on the contrary, it is a singular fact, and one quite consonant with the principles of sound logic, that its first and general use is mostly to be expected from its want of significance. The interpretation is a trammel to the use. Symbols are essential to comprehensive argument.
“Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt.”
Source: The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 9. Of the Universal Colour Bill
Context: The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools.... Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to assert — and with increasing truth — that there was no great difference between them and the very highest class of Polygons, now that they were raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether Statical or Kinetical, by the simple process of Colour Recognition. Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they began to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the Law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights.
An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I
Context: We cannot work without matter to work on, and we must look round and see what there is. There is a material which will never fail. It is perhaps eternal, at least for us. It costs nothing, and it is everywhere. Raise your eyes on a clear night and look at the magnificent spectacle of the starry heavens... Would it be asking too much to ask masters occasionally to direct their pupils to the observation of the most splendid sight which the sons of men have had before their eyes ever since they have trod the earth?—to point out the position and tell the names of some of the brightest of these wondrous objects; to show the apparent motion of these bodies, to point out the polar star, and to lead by slow and sure steps to the conclusion which the genius of man has drawn from this apparent motion, and other considerations.
“O Star (the fairest one in sight)
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud —”
" Take Something Like a Star http://somethingbeautiful.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/robert_frost_to.html" (1949)
General sources
Context: O Star (the fairest one in sight)
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud —
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us that we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
“For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.”
Songs and Sonnets (1633), The Good-Morrow
Context: p>I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.</p
Journal entry (22 February1959, 8:15 P.M.)
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (1969)
Context: There is, for instance, the fact that there is a greater readiness to work in a society with a high standard of living than in one with a low standard. We are more ready to strive and work for superfluities than for necessities. People who are clear-sighted, undeluded, and sober-minded will not go on working once their reasonable needs are satisfied. A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities. The readiness to work springs from trivial, questionable motives. … A vigorous society is a society made up of people who set their hearts on toys, and who would work for superfluities than for necessities. The self-righteous moralists decry such a society, yet it is well to keep in mind that both children and artists need luxuries more than they need necessities.
"The Monument of Giordano Bruno", inspired by the statue in memory of Giordano Bruno at the place where he was burned as a heretic.
Astrophel and Other Poems (1894)
Context: Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win,
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,
Save of his own soul's giving.
“One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?”
Esthétique du Mal (1944)
Context: One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?
Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,
But the dark italics it could not propound.
And out of what sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur,
Merely in living as and where we live.
Attributed
“For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight,
And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous
That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.”
Sed neque tam facilis res ulla est, quin ea primum
difficilis magis ad credendum constet, itemque
nil adeo magnum neque tam mirabile quicquam,
quod non paulatim minuant mirarier omnes.
Book II, lines 1026–1029 (tr. Stallings)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.”
Roosevelt here slightly misquotes Thomas Babington Macaulay, who in a speech on parliamentary reform (2 March 1831) asserted: "The voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve."
1930s, Address at the Democratic State Convention, Syracuse, New York (1936)
Context: The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.
Never has a Nation made greater strides in the safeguarding of democracy than we have made during the past three years. Wise and prudent men — intelligent conservatives — have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time. In the words of the great essayist, "The voice of great events is proclaiming to us. Reform if you would preserve." I am that kind of conservative because I am that kind of liberal.
“He who has a false hope, has not that sight of his own corruptions which the saint has.”
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), PART II : Showing What Are No Certain Signs That Religious Affections Are Truly Gracious, Or That They Are Not, Ch. 11: Nothing can be certainly known of the nature of Religious Affections, that they much dispose persons with their mouths to praise and glorify God. <!-- (1831 edition), p. 194, also in Complete Christian Classics (1999), Vol. 1, p. 365 -->
Context: !-- He who has a false hope, has not that sight of his own corruptions which the saint has. A true Christian has ten times more to do with his heart and its corruptions, than a hypocrite: and the sins of his heart and practice, appear to him in their blackness; they look dreadful; and it often appears a very mysterious thing, that any grace can be consistent with such corruption, or should be in such a heart. But a false hope hides corruption, covers it all over, and the hypocrite looks clean and bright in his own eyes.
--> There are two sorts of hypocrites: one that are deceived with their outward morality and external religion; many of which are professed Arminians, in the doctrine of justification: and the other, are those that are deceived with false discoveries and elevations; which often cry down works, and men's own righteousness, and talk much of free grace; but at the same time make a righteousness of their discoveries, and of their humiliation, and exalt themselves to heaven with them. These two kinds of hypocrites, Mr. Shepard, in his Exposition of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, distinguishes by the names of legal and evangelical hypocrites; and often speaks of the latter as the worst. And it is evident that the latter are commonly by far the most confident in their hope, and with the most difficulty brought off from it: I have scarcely known the instance of such a one, in my life, that has been undeceived.
“Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.”
" The Gardener's Daughter http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/englishidyls/gardenersdaughter.html", l. 139-140 (1842)
From a letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts
1790s
Context: A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
Visions
Context: At that time I also had, for a short while, the strength to bear it. But all too soon I lost external sight of the shape of that beautiful man, and I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit, and I had a vision about the following hours.
The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)
Context: A young lady, being on a visit at a noble friend's mansion, was betrayed by complaisance into an admission that she was very fond of potted sprats, though she abhorred the sight, taste, and smell of them. This little falsehood brought her into a false position as respects her noble friend, who, to oblige her young guest, provided for her nothing but potted sprats.... So the aforesaid young lady found herself suddenly seated beside a plate of sprats, with all their disgusting odours rising to her face, and their horrid forms spread out before her eyes. A moment ago, she might, with entire propriety, have declared her disgust of them; but she had taken her false position, and that was now to govern.... But here the authority ended of all external government. The chyle would not digest the intruder, nor the pylorus permit its egress The whole inner woman suffered a state of rebellion; when a new actor appeared upon the stage... in the shape of fever, first mild and gentle, then importunate and bold, then raging, and then outrageous. The fever introduced, in turn, a new agent in the shape of a physician, grave and knowing; who introduced two others more knowing still, who introduced various cathartics, diaphoretics, lancets, leeches, blisters, and glysters, which together soon introduced debility, epilepsy, and catalepsy; which, to the astonishment of no one but the doctors, introduced death, who ended the false position.
Space (1912)
Context: Supposing you knew — not by sight or by instinct, but by sheer intellectual knowledge, as I know the truth of a mathematical proposition — that what we call empty space was full, crammed. Not with lumps of what we call matter like hills and houses, but with things as real — as real to the mind.
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 22. How I Then Tried to Diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by Other Means, and of the Result
Context: I devoted several months in privacy to the composition of a treatise on the mysteries of Three Dimensions. Only, with the view of evading the Law, if possible, I spoke not of a physical Dimension, but of a Thoughtland whence, in theory, a Figure could look down upon Flatland and see simultaneously the insides of all things, and where it was possible that there might be supposed to exist a Figure environed, as it were, with six Squares, and containing eight terminal Points. But in writing this book I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose... my life was under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me; all sights tantalized and tempted me to outspoken treason, because I could not but compare what I saw in Two Dimensions with what it really was if seen in Three, and could hardly refrain from making my comparisons aloud.' I neglected my clients and my own business to give myself to the contemplation of the mysteries which I had once beheld, yet which I could impart to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision.
"Flight", pp.125, Harper Row 1966
Native Son (1940)
Variant translation to modern English: I am that which is highest, I am that which is lowest, I am that which is ALL.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72
Context: Thus is that Blissful Sight end of all manner of pain to the loving soul, and the fulfilling of all manner of joy and bliss. And that shewed He in the high, marvellous words where He said: I IT AM that is highest; I IT AM that is lowest; I IT AM that is ALL.
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 18. How I came to Spaceland, and What I Saw There
Context: Once more I felt myself rising through space. It was even as the Sphere had said. The further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the field of vision. My native city, with the interior of every house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. We mounted higher, and lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me.Awestruck at the sight of the mysteries of the earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, I said to my Companion, "Behold, I am become as a God. For the wise men in our country say that to see all things, or as they express it, OMNIVIDENCE, is the attribute of God alone." There was something of scorn in the voice of my Teacher as he made answer: "Is it so indeed? Then the very pick-pockets and cut-throats of my country are to be worshiped by your wise men as being Gods: for there is not one of them that does not see as much as you see now. But trust me, your wise men are wrong."
As quoted in “The Fascist Reform of the Penal Law in Italy,” Giulo Battaglin, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 24, Issue 1, May-June, summer 1933, p. 286. Speech in the Senate (1925)
Paraphrasing a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".
Kenneth Arnold's paraphrasing of a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".
Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 186-7
2010s, 2017, January, Inaugural address, (January 20, 2017)
"Good Old Neon", Oblivion: Stories
Short stories
1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, pp. 128–129
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Egoism and Altruism, p. 96
Consciencism (1964), Introduction
"The Nationalism Show" http://web.archive.org/web/20190721205511/https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/american-nationalism-public-policy-aesthetics-donald-trump/ (March 2019), National Review
“There is a school of philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight.”
In these words Mr. A.P. Sinnett began his book, The Occult World, the first popular exposition of Theosophy, published thirty years ago.[1881]... Since then, many thousands have learned...yet to the majority its teachings are still unknown..
A Textbook of Theosophy (1912), Chapter One
Source: The Other Side of Death (1903), p. 42, (1903)
The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)
Life of Christ
Poor negroes! I would have wished to buy them all that I might say to them, "Go! Bless Providence. You are free!"
Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)
“There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.”
Retort attributed to Allen, during his captivity among the British, commenting after a picture of Washington was hung in a outhouse, in an anecdote told by Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Lincoln, Vol. 1 (1996) by David Herbert Donald; the documentation on this is scanty, and it conceivably arose as a comical anecdote as early as Lincoln's time.
Variants:
It is most appropriately hung. There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.
As quoted in Strange But True, America : Weird Tales from All 50 States (2004) by John Hafnor, p. 114
It is most appropriately hung, nothing ever made the British shit like the sight of George Washington.
Disputed
This was said not only for that same time, but also to set thereupon the ground of my faith when He saith anon following: But take it, believe it, and keep thee therein and comfort thee therewith and trust thou thereto; and thou shalt not be overcome.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 70
The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 32
Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review. By Soren Kierkegaard, 1846 edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1978 Princeton University Press P. 68
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)
Chap. 6 : Elevate Your Perspective
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)
Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, pp. 49–50
Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)
“All Egypt aches in the sun's sight;”
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing
‘To Mr. Attwood’, Political Register (5 May 1821), p. 343
1820s
‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 200
1800s
" Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question", The Guardian, 25 Sept. 2011
translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Herman Kruyder uit zijn brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vind mij een stoere bergbeklimmer die steeds als hij de top in zicht heeft er weer afgestoten wordt, maar eens lukt het.. .Toch moet ik, ik kan niet anders. 't Is zoo jammer dat Jo [zijn vrouw] altijd zo gauw instort, anders vond ik de zaak niet zo heel erg.
Quote of Kruyder in a letter to P.A. Regnault, from Limburg April 1930; as cited in Herman Kruyder 1881 – 1935: gedoemde scheppingen, ed. Mabel Hoogendonk; (ISBN 90-400-9905-7), Waanders, Zwolle 1997, p. 31
both had very frequently their break-downs and went into the mental hospital for some time
dated quotes
On consumers being willing to avoid abuses in “Wage Theft, Slavery, and Climate Change on the Outlaw Ocean” https://civileats.com/2019/09/27/wage-theft-slavery-and-climate-change-on-the-outlaw-ocean/ (Civil Eats; 2019 Sep 27)
“Believe me; democracy in action can be an unpretty sight.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 8c “The Memory of Running” (p. 198)
“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)
"Eyes", pp. 98–99
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)
LDN
Song lyrics, Alright, Still (2006)
Said in an interview with the Guardian. Russell Tovey: ‘When I started having sex I panicked because I didn’t feel old enough’ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/11/russell-tovey-when-i-started-having-sex-i-panicked-because-i-didnt-feel-old-enough (11 March 2018)
The Jeweler’s Eye, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons (1968) p. 68