“Some students don’t know enough to tackle a dead cat.”—Dr. Gordon Wilson
“The boldness of this age is such, is not only to make a man’s words sound otherwise than when they came from him, and so traduce him; but confidently to aver that there are such things written in books, of such men, which never yet came into their thoughts, much less into their pen.—Jeremiah Burroughs,
Irenicum“Truth is the bond that keeps unity, but error is wild. You know not where to find it, nor yourselves if you give way to it. Our present times will be a testimony of this to all future generations.”— Burroughs
“Don’t talk to me of pacts. There are no binding oaths between men and lions—wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds—they are all bent on hating each other to the death. So with you and me.”—Homer,
Iliad (Fagles Bk XXII)
“Thrice miserable and lost are people whom nothing can delight except what is, if not obscene and dirty, yet inane, profitless, ridiculous, and unworthy of man.”—Bucer,
De Regno Christi“Denique cum praecipua felicitatis pars sit, ut quod sis, esse velis, nimirum totum hoc praestat compendio mea Philautia, ut neminem suae formae, neminem sui ingenii, neminem generis, neminem loci, neminem instituti, nemiminem patriae poeniteat, adeo, ut nec Irlandus cum Italo, nec Thrax cum Atheniensi, nec Scytha cum Insulis Fortunatis cupiat permutare. Et o singularem naturae sollicitudinem, ut in tanta rerum varietate paria fecit omnia.” [And since for the most part happiness consists in being willing to be what you are, my Self-love has provided a shortcut to it by ensuring that no one is dissatisfied with his own looks, talents, people, position, customs, or country. And so no Irishman would want to change places with an Italian nor Thracian with Athenian nor Scythian with an inhabitant of the Islands of the Blessed. What remarkable foresight of Nature it was, to level out all these variations and make all alike!]— Erasmus,
Praise of Folly“[These essays’] second object was to show that the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence and even, for practical purposes, and the attainability of honesty.”— Ruskin,
Unto These Last“For no human actions ever were to intended by the maker of men to be guided by the balances of expediency, but by balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavors to determine expediency futile for evermore. No man ever knew or can know, but will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act.”
“…perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.”
“Labor is the contest of the life of man with an opposite—the term “life” including his intellect, soul, and physical power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material force.”
“We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbors(usually less well placed in the world than themselves), that they should “remain content in the station in which providence has placed them.” There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbor should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not your business; but it is very much your business to remain content with your own. What is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well administered competence: modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether or not they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honoring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”
“We had better seek for a system which will develop honest men, then for one which will deal cunningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.”
“No doubt work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either health of mind or body without it.”—Ruskin
“Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”—John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon III.4
“Imitatur ars igitur naturam, et quod ea desiderat id inveniat, quod ostendit sequatur. Nihil est enim quod aut natura extremum invenerit aut doctrina primum; sed rerum principia ab ingenio profecta sunt exitus disciplina conparantur.” [Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent and the ends are reached by discipline.]—
Rhetorica Ad Herrenium III.xxii
“Neque equus indomitus quamvis bene natura conpositus sit, idoneus potest esse ad utilitates quae desiderantur ab equo; neque homo indoctus quamvis sit ingeniosus, ad virtutem potest pervenire.” [Neither can an untrained horse, however well-built by nature, be fit for the service desired of a horse; nor can an uncultivated man, however well-endowed by nature, attain to virtue.]—IV.xlvi
“It is the nature of war that what is beneficial to you is detrimental to the enemy and what is of service to him always hurts you. It is therefore a maxim never to do, or omit doing, anything as a consequence of his actions, but to consult invariably your own interest only.”—Vegetius,
De Re Militari Bk III
“Nature is infinitely stronger than the works of man; why not profit from it?”—Maurice de Saxe,
My Reveries on the Art of War “The first thing to about think about then will be the question of subsistence; without supplies no army is brave, and a great general who is hungry is not a hero for long.”
“A perfect general, like Plato’s republic, is a figment of the imagination. Either would be admirable, but it is not characteristic of human nature to produce beings exempt from human weaknesses and defects. The finest medallion have a reverse side.”
“Skepticism is the mother of security. Even though only fools trust their enemies, prudent persons never do. The general is the principle sentinel of his army.”— Frederick the Great,
Instructions for His Generals
“A well-established maxim of war is not to do anything which your enemy wishes—and for the single reason that he does so wish.”
“The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.”
“The effect of discussions, making a show of talent, and calling councils of war will be what the effect of these things has been in every age: they will end in the adoption of the most pusillanimous or (if the expression be preferred) the most prudent measures, which in war are almost uniformly the worst that can be adopted. True wisdom, so far as a general is concerned, consists in energetic determination.”
“War is composed of nothing but accidents, and, although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius. In war there is but one favorable moment; The great art is to seize it.”— Napoleon Bonaparte,
Maxims “Now, for your help in this, God has given two lights to the world: the sun, the greater, to rule the day; and the moon, the lesser, to rule the night. So he has given two lights to man to guide his course: first are the scriptures, the greater, to guide man, especially in his spiritual condition, in those more immediate references he has to God, for His worship and enjoyment of communion with Him. The other is less, the light of reason, to be his guide in natural and civil things, in ordering his life for his natural and civil good. And though it is true that religion makes use of reason, and that we have help from the scriptures in our natural and civil affairs, yet these two lights each have their distinct, special use according to those distinct conditions of man.”— Jeremiah Burroughs,
Irenicum“None of this means anything if you are alone with your genius, whispering back and forth to each other cogito ergo sum until you realize you’re the same person. That was the promise of modernity and postmodernity, and you are more prey to it than you realize.”—Joffre Swait, Substack “Repent of Aloneness”
“Admittedly there are spirits so pronounced that they are unrepentant. Chief among them is marc, or
grappa—brandy distilled from the leavings of the vintage. As it happens, though, I have no desire to cover it with anything. I find it delectable— full of nostalgia and the remembrance of the first afternoon on which I drank it. It is relevant of earth and stems and the resurrected soul of the grape, all combined with an overpowering suggestion of freshly painted radiators in a shoe store—which, you will concede, must be the very essence of unforgettability.”— Robert Farrar Capon,
The Supper of the Lamb“Let the end then of the common law be defined as the preservation, in the concerns and disputes of citizens, of an impartiality founded on statute and custom.”—Cicero,
De Oratore I.lxii
“And as history, which bears witness to the passing of the ages, sheds light upon reality, gives life to recollection and guidance to human existence, and brings tidings of ancient days, whose voice, but the orators, can entrust her to immortality?”— II.ix
“But these
loci can be useful only to a speaker who is a man of affairs, qualified by experience, which age assuredly brings, or by listening and reflection, which through careful study outruns age. For bring me a man as accomplished, as clear and acute in thinking, and as ready in delivery as you please; if, for all that, he is a stranger to social intercourse, precedent, tradition, and the manners and disposition of his fellow countrymen, these
loci from which proofs are derived will avail him but little. I must have talent which has been cultivated; soil, as it were, not of a single plowing, but both broken and given a second plowing so as to be capable of bearing better and more abundant produce. And the cultivation is practice, listening, reading, and letters.”—II.xxx
“Together with all your other claims to distinction the greatest one was that you not only said the proper thing but also avoided saying what was not the proper thing.”—II.lxxiii
“They may anticipate that an academic system, formed upon my model, will result in nothing better or higher than in the production of that antiquated variety of human nature and remnant of feudalism, as they consider it, called ‘a gentleman.’”— Richard Henry Newman,
The Idea of a University“Just as a commander wishes to have tall and well-formed and vigorous soldiers, not from any abstract devotion to the military standard of height or age, but for the purposes of war, and no one thinks it anything but natural and praiseworthy in him to be contemplating, not abstract qualities, but his own living and breathing men; so, in like manner, when the Church founds a University, she is not cherishing talent, genius, or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the sake of her children, with a view to their spiritual welfare and their religious influence and usefulness, with the object training them to fill their respective posts in life better, and of making them more intelligent, capable, active members of society.”
“When the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candor, self-command, and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. All of this it will be and will do in a measure, even when the mental formation be made after a model but partially true; for, as far as effectiveness goes, even false views of things have more influence and inspire more respect than no views at all. Men who fancy they see what is not are more energetic, and make their way better, than those who see nothing; And so the undoubted infidel, the fanatic, the heresiarch, are able to do much, while the mere hereditary Christian, who has never realized the truth which he holds, is unable to do anything. But, if consistency of you can add so much strength even to error, what may it not be expected to furnish to the dignity, the energy, and the influence of Truth!”
“It is no principle with sensible men, of whatever cast of opinion, to do always what is abstractedly best.”
“Compromise, in a large sense of the word, is the first principle of combination; and anyone who insists on enjoying his rights to the full, and his opinions without toleration for his neighbor’s, and his own way in all things, will soon have all things altogether to himself, and no one to share them with him.”
“Rather, in a state of society such as ours, in which authority, prescription, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine influences go for nothing, in which patience of thought, and depth and consistency of view, are scorned as subtle and scholastic, in which free discussion and fallible judgment are prized as the birthright of each individual, I must be excused if I exercise towards this age, as regards its belief in this doctrine, some portion of that skepticism which it exercises towards every received but unscrutinized assertion whatsoever.”
“[The sciences] serve to transfer our knowledge from the custody of memory to the surer and more abiding protection of philosophy, thereby providing both for its spread and its advance…”
“Any secular science, cultivated exclusively, may become dangerous to Religion; and I account for it on this broad principle: that no science whatever, however comprehensive it may be, but will fall largely into error, if it be constituted the sole exponent of all things in on earth, and that, for the simple reason that it is encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems which it has no instruments to solve.”
“The drift and meaning of a branch of knowledge varies with the company in which it is introduced to the student. If his reading is confined simply to one subject, however such division of labor may favour the advancement of a particular pursuit, a point into which I do not here enter, certainly it has a tendency to contract his mind. If it is incorporated with others it depends on those others as to the kind of influence which it exerts upon him. Thus the Classics, which in England are the means of refining the taste, have in France subserved the spread of revolutionary and deistical doctrines.”
“Things, which can bear to be cut off from everything else and yet persist in living, must have life in themselves; pursuits, which issue in nothing, and still maintain their ground for ages, which are regarded as admirable, though they have not as yet proved themselves to be useful, must have their sufficient end in themselves, whatever it turn out to be.”
“There is no true culture without acquirements, and philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; And without such learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful any trustworthy conclusion.”
“Again, the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the mind, and why? Because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judging of passing events, and of all events, and a conscious superiority over them, which before it did not possess.”
“Such a training is a matter of rule; it is not mere application, however exemplary, which introduces the mind to truth, nor the reading of many books, nor the getting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All this is short of enough; A man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge.”
“A man of well improved faculties has the command of another’s knowledge. A man without them, has not the command of his own.”
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