Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
regumque turres. — Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Carmina, I, 4
Pale Death knocks with the same bony fist
At the door of paupers’ huts and kingly towers. — Horace, Odes, I, 4
Category Archives: Quotations
Mondo Manifesto
Ma tra tutti gli uomini grandi che sopra tal mirabile effetto di natura hanno filosofato, più mi meraviglio del Keplero che di altri, il quale, d’ingegno libero ed acuto, e che aveva in mano i moti attribuiti alla Terra, abbia poi dato orecchio ed assenso a predominii della Luna sopra l’acqua, ed a proprietà occulte, e simili fanciullezze. — Galileo, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1632), Giornata Quarta.
• But among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he has nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon’s dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities. — Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World-Systems, “Fourth Day”
Rhyme and Again
From John Julius Norwich’s More Christmas Crackers (1990):
Holorhymes are whole lines which have the same sound but different meanings. For some reason, they seem to go better in French. Louise de Vilmorin gave me two beautiful ones:
Étonnamment monotone et lasse
Est ton âme en mon automne, hélas!And
Gall, amant de la reine, alla tour magnanime,
Gallament de l’arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.This second one is by Victor Hugo.
Mot d’un Moucheron
« Que me proposent-ils là, les imprudents ! Parce que j’ai remué quelques grains de sable sur le rivage, suis-je en état de connaître les abîmes océaniques ? La vie a des secrets, insondables. Le savoir humain sera rayé des archives du monde avant que nous ayons le dernier mot d’un moucheron. » — Souvenirs entomologiques de Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915)
— “What do they want from me, those imprudent ones? Because I’ve lifted a few grains of sand on the shore, am I ready to sound the ocean’s depths? Life has secrets, unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be erased from the world’s archives before we have the last word on a gnat.”
2 < 1
«У Менделеева две жены, но Менделеев-то у меня один!» — Царь Алекса́ндр II
• “Yes, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev!” — Tsar Alexander II responds to a complaint about Mendeleev’s bigamy
Figure Philia
“I love figures, it gives me an intense satisfaction to deal with them, they’re living things to me, and now that I can handle them all day long I feel myself again.” — the imprisoned accountant Jean Charvin in W. Somerset Maugham’s short-story “A Man with a Conscience” (1939)
Still-Popper
“My only drugs are silence and solitude.” — Frederick Forsyth in The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue (2015)
The Comatose Never Knows
“What’s it like to be in a coma?”
“How the fuck do I know? I was in a coma.” — stunt-rider Evel Knievel (1938-2007)
Sóccrates Says…
“A beleza vem primeiro. A vitória é secundária. O que importa é a alegria.” — Sócrates, o futebolista brasileiro
• “Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.” — Brazilian footballer Sócrates
I’ve also found the quote as:
“A beleza está primeiro. A vitória é secundária. O que é interessa é o prazer.”
• “Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is pleasure.”
Reflet de Robert
[I]t was hard to pierce Robert de Montesquiou’s carapace — and he wouldn’t have wanted you to. He was perhaps at heart a melancholic: he liked to say that his mother had “given me the sad present of life”. His restlessness and furious inquisitiveness might have been a response to this. He was vain without being especially self-reflective, one of those who, rather than look inside to discover who they are, prefer to see themselves in the reflections that come back from others. — Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat (2019), pp. 192-3
Elsewhere Other-Accessible…
• Portait of a Peacock — Cornelia Otis Skinner’s essay on Montesquiou
• Le Paon dans les Pyrénées — review of Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 