Books and Truth

"The great fault of journalists is to talk only of new books, as if truth were always something new. It seems to me that a man has no good reason to prefer new books until he has read all the old ones." (Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Persian Letters)

Le grand tort qu'ont les journalistes, c'est qu'ils ne parlent que des livres nouveaux; comme si la vérité était jamais nouvelle. Il me semble que, jusqu'à ce qu'un homme ait lu tous les livres anciens, il n'a aucune raison de leur préférer les nouveaux. (Montesquieu, Lettres persanes)

Who?

Who was the first fool to say "Latin is a dead language"?

Entelechy

The soul is the entelechy of the body (thanks, Aristotle!)

Of Course

"Of course, I shall die in the Church; of course, I need the Church incomparably more than literature (I don't need literature at all), and the clergy is after all dearer to me than all (classes). But dying among them, yet shall I die with a certain pain on their behalf."
(Vasiliĭ Vasil'evich Rozanov, Fallen Leaves)

Va da sé che morrò, dopo tutto, nella Chiesa. Essa mi è incomparabilmente più necessaria della letteratura (nel mio caso, del tutto superflua) e, a dispetto dei suoi membri, il clero mi è anch'esso il più caro tra tutti i ceti sociali. Anche se questo luogo (la Chiesa) è pieno di vermi e di putredine, io ci rimarrò. Ci rimarrò in mezzo agli idioti. Perché? lì si parla dell'immortalità dell'anima. Di Dio. Della vita eterna. Di ricompensa e di castigo. Perché lì esiste un altare, l'unico sulla terra.

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner?

It is said that this Latin quotation was once repeated to Donne, "Thunder against vices, but spare the vicious."

"What," said he, "condemn cards, and pardon the sharper!"

So Isidorus says: "Preserve the guns, but destroy the gunners."

(Craufurd Tait Ramage, Great Thoughts From Classic Authors)

Day

And there was evening and there was morning. And there was day.

Grains

A few grains of
knowledge in a
sugar bowl:

A fleshy heart
is enough for
shaking a
steady soul.

(Léon Bertoletti, Grains, Heart vs Soul)

Heads in the Crowd

"I profoundly believe that the greater a man is the more he exposes himself to being wounded by all. Peace and quiet are only for the mediocre, for those whose heads disappear in the crowd."

(Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Rigadoon‎)

Je crois profondément que plus un homme est grand, plus il s'expose à être blessé par tous. La tranquillité n'est que pour les médiocres, ceux dont la tête disparaît dans la foule. (Céline, Rigodon)