Satius est supervacua scire quam nihil.
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
Seneca the Younger, Letter LXXXVIII: “On liberal and vocational studies.”
Category: Thought
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
Aristotle, Politics, Book V, 1311a.11.
All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.
Plotinus, First Ennead, II.3.7.
It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: “How did I get into this condition?”
Seneca the Younger, Letter XXXVII: “On Allegiance to Virtue.”
Categories
Marcus Aurelius
A man should be upright, not kept upright.
Categories
Charles Baudelaire
La plus belle des ruses du diable est
de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris (1869; posthumous).
Paraphrased in The Usual Suspects as “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Sketch of the author is by Édouard Manet.