Category: The Ancients
“There are three orders of good ; viz. that which is imparticipable and superessential ; that which is imparticipable and essential ; and that which is essential and participable. Of these, the last is such as our nature contains; the good which ranks among forms is essential; and that which is beyond essence is superessential. Or we say that the good which subsists in us may be considered as a habit, in consequence of subsisting in a subject; the next to this ranks as essence, and a part of essence, I mean the good which ranks among forms; and the good which is beyond essence, is neither a habit, nor a part. With respect to the good, also, which subsists according to essence, it must be observed, that since forms are twofold, some alone distinguishing the essences of the things fashioned by form, but others their perfections, the genus of essence, same and different, and the form of animal, horse, and man, and every thing of this kind, give distinction to essence and subjects; but the form of the good, the beautiful, and the just, and in like manner the form of virtue, of health, strength, and every thing of a similar nature, are perfective of the beings to which they belong: and of some, essence is the leader, but of others the good.” – Thomas Taylor, On the Mysteries
“The human race is imbecile, and of small estimation, sees but a little, and possesses a connascent nothingness; and the only remedy of its inherent error, perturbation, and unstable mutation, is its participation, as much as possible, of a certain portion of divine light.” – Iamblichus, On the Mysteries (trans. Thomas Taylor)
“Since the ignorance of, and deception about, divine natures is impiety and impurity, but a scientific knowledge of the Gods is holy and beneficial, the ignorance of things honourable and beautiful will be darkness, but the knowledge of them will be light. And the former, indeed, will fill men with all evils, through the want of erudition, and through audacity; but the latter will be the cause to them of every good.” – Porphyry, “The Epistle of Porphyry to the Egyptian Anebo” (trans. Thomas Taylor)
“The sunflower moves to the extent that it is free to move, and in its rotation, if we could hear the sound of the air buffeted by its movement, we should be aware that it is a hymn to its king, such as it is within the power of a plant to sing.” – Proclus, On the Hieratic Art of the Greeks (trans. Ralph Manheim)
Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, a dew, a bubble;
A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud:
Thus should we look upon the world.
– from The Diamond Sutra
“How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man? for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal. And how small a part of the whole substance? and how small a part of the universal soul? and on what a small clod of the whole earth you creep? Reflecting on all this consider nothing to be great, except to act as your nature leads you, and to endure what the common nature brings.” – Marcus Aurelius, The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George Long)
“Life is short, the arts long, opportunity fleeting, experience fallacious, judgment difficult.” – Hippocrates of Kos
“If you do not know where you come from, you will always be a child.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
“An America darkened by ignorant and bigoted religiosity cannot hear too often about the plucky, gloriously open-minded rationalists who launched Western civilization in 5th-century Athens.” – George Scialabba, “Apologies to Thucydides”
“God’s Word is no longer grace, and grace itself is no longer grace, if we ascribe to man a predisposition towards this Word, a possibility of knowledge regarding it, that is intrinsically and independently native to him.” – Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” – Ecclesiastes 9:11
“I know nothing I could call my own if the will by which I will ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ is not my own. If I use it to do evil, to whom is the evil to be attributed if not to myself?” – Augustine of Hippo, On Free Will (trans. Burleigh)
“However great and important the virtues may be, we know well enough that they are not common property, but the property of each individual man. Truth and wisdom are common to all, and all wise men are also happy by cleaving to truth. But one man does not become happy by another’s happiness. If one man seeks to attain happiness by imitating another, he seeks his happiness where he sees the other found his, that is to say in unchangeable and common truth. No one is made prudent by the prudence of another, or courageous by his courage, or temperate by his temperance, or just by his justice. A man is made virtuous by regulating his soul according to the rules and guiding lights of the virtues which dwell indestructibly in the truth and wisdom that are the common property of all.” – Augustine of Hippo, On Free Will (trans. Burleigh)
“Caution is the best guard of tranquility. It is the most difficult thing in the world not to be upset when opinions which we hold, and to which we have given a too ready and too willful approval, are shattered by contrary arguments and are, as it were, weapons torn from our hands. It is a good thing to give in calmly to arguments that are well considered and grasped, just as it is dangerous to hold as known what in fact we do not know. We should be on our guard lest, when things are frequently undermined which we assumed would stand firm and abide, we fall into such hatred or fear of reason that we think we cannot trust even the most clearly manifest truth.” – Augustine of Hippo, The Teacher (trans. Burleigh)
“Homer would appear to be divinely inspired in comparison with other poets; he did not attempt to make a poem out of the whole Trojan War even though the war had a beginning and an end, for it would have become too big to be easily seen as a whole, or, even if moderated in length, it would have become too complex in its variety of events. What he did is to select one part of the whole and use many episodes taken from the other parts, e.g., the Catalogue of Ships and other episodes, which he interspersed in the poem.” – Aristotle, Poetics (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“In every state there are three parts: the very rich, the very poor, and the middle class. So since it is agreed that the best and the mean is that which is moderate, it is evident that the best possession of goods which comes from fortune, too, is the one which is moderate, for this is the easiest to deal with in a rational manner; for he who greatly excels in beauty or strength or high birth or wealth, or in the contrarities of these, i.e. in ugliness or weakness or low birth or poverty, finds it difficult to follow reason. The former tend to become insolent or great criminals, but the latter rather rogues and petty rascals; for, of unjust effects, some result through insolence, others from roguery.” – Aristotle, Politics, Book IV (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Since those who are equal in one respect only should not share equally in all respects and those who are unequal in one respect should not share unequally in all respects, such forms of government which violate this principle are of necessity perversions.” – Aristotle, Politics, Book III (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Without wealth and freedom a state cannot be managed at all, and without justice and military virtue it cannot be managed well.” – Aristotle, Politics, Book III (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“The nurture and pursuits of the young should be regulated by laws, for when they become habitual they are not painful. Getting the right nurture and care while young, however, is perhaps not sufficient; but since young men should pursue and be habituated to these also when they have become adults, laws would be needed for these too, and, in general, laws would be needed for man’s entire life, for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and penalties rather than what is noble. In view of this, some think that legislators (a) should urge men to pursue virtue and should exhort them to act for the sake of what is noble, expecting those who are well on their way in their habits of acting well to follow their advice, (b) should impose punishments and penalties on those who disobey and are of inferior nature, and (c) should banish permanently those who are incurable; for they think that a man who is good and lives with a view to what is noble will obey reason, while a bad man who desires pleasures should be punished by pain like a beast of burden. And this is the reason they also say that the pains inflicted should be those which are most contrary to the pleasures these men love. So if, as already noted, the man who is to be good should be well nurtured and acquire the proper habits so that he may live in good pursuits and neither willingly nor unwillingly do what is bad, these would be attained by those who live according to intellect and an order which is right and has effective strength.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book X (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute the goods of the state in violation of merit, taking most or all of the goods for themselves, and paying attention to wealth most of all. Accordingly, these rulers are few and evil, instead of being the most equitable.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Friendship is a virtue or something with virtue, and, besides, it is most necessary to life; for no one would choose to live without friends, though he were to have all the other goods. Also those who possess wealth or have acquired authority or power are thought to need friends most of all; for of what benefit is the possession of such goods without the opportunity of beneficence, which is most exercised towards friends and most praised when so exercised, or how can such goods be guarded and be preserved without friends? For the greater these goods, the more insecure they are. In poverty and other misfortunes, too, we regard our friends as our only refuge. Friends help the young in guarding them from error, and they help the old who, because of their weakness, need attention or additional support for their actions, and they help those in the prime of life to do noble actions.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Justice is a disposition in virtue of which the just man is said to be disposed by intention to do what is just and to make a distribution, either between himself and another or between others, not so as to get more of what is choiceworthy for himself and to give less of it to another, nor to take less of what is harmful and to give more of it to another (and similarly if the distribution is between others), but in such a way that the parties receive what is proportionally equal. As for injustice, which is the contrary of justice, it is of what is unjust; and this, which is in violation of what is proportional, is an excess or deficiency of what is beneficial or harmful, respectively.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Of things which come to us by nature, we first bring along the powers and later exhibit the corresponding activities. This indeed is clear in the case of sensations; for it is not by seeing often or hearing often that we acquired the corresponding power of sensation, but conversely: we used the power after we possessed it, we did not come to possess it after using it. In the case of the virtues, on the other hand, we acquire them as a result of prior activities; and this is like the case of the arts, for that which we are to perform by art after learning, we first learn by performing, e.g. we become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre. Similarly, we become just by doing what is just, temperate by doing what is temperate, and brave by doing brave deeds. This is confirmed also by what happens in states. For it is by making citizens acquire certain habits that legislators make them good, and this is what every legislator wishes, but legislators who do not do this well are making a mistake; and good government differs from bad government in this respect.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“The investigation of truth is in one sense difficult, in another easy. A sign of this is the fact that neither can one attain it adequately, nor do all fail, but each says something about the nature of things; and while each of us contributes nothing or little to the truth, a considerable amount of it results from all our contributions. Thus, if the truth seems to be like the door in the proverb ‘Who would miss it?’, in this sense it would be easy; but to have some of the whole truth and not be able to attain the part we are aiming at, this indicates that it is difficult. Perhaps the cause of this difficulty, which may exist in two ways, is in us and not in the facts. For as the eyes of the bat are to the light of day, so is the intellect of our soul to the objects which in their nature are most evident of all.” – Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book II (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“That time is either altogether nonexistent, or that it exists but hardly or obscurely, might be suspected from the following: One part of it has come to be but no longer exists; the other part will be but does not yet exist; and it is of these two parts that infinite time, or any time one might take, is composed. But it is thought that what is composed of nonbeings cannot participate in substance. In addition, if any thing with parts is to exist, then, when it exists, all or some of its parts must exist. But, although time is divisible, some parts of it have been and others will be, and no part of it exists. And as for a moment, it is no part of time, for a part measures the whole, and the whole must be composed of the parts, but it is thought that time is not composed of moments.” – Aristotle, Physics, Book IV (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
“Nothing can be more true than scientific knowledge except intuition.” – Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Book II (trans. Apostle and Gerson)
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generations. (Exodus 34:7)
“It behoveth thee not to grieve for that which must happen: for who can avert, by his wisdom, the decrees of fate? No one can leave the way marked out for him by Providence. Existence and non-existence, pleasure and pain all have Time for their root. Time createth all things and Time destroyeth all creatures. It is Time that burneth creatures and it is Time that extinguisheth the fire. All states, the good and the evil, in the three worlds, are caused by Time. Time cutteth short all things and createth them anew. Time alone is awake when all things are asleep: indeed, Time is incapable of being overcome. Time passeth over all things without being retarded. Knowing, as thou dost, that all things past and future and all that exist at the present moment, are the offspring of Time, it behoveth thee not to throw away thy reason.” — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, The Mahabharata: Adi Parva (trans. Roy)
“There are in all nine virtues, and when we say that a man possesses these virtues it is as much as to say that he begins to do such and such things. They are liberality combined with dignity, mildness combined with firmness, bluntness combined with respect, aptness for government combined with caution, docility combined with boldness, straightforwardness combined with gentleness, easy negligence combined with discrimination, resolution combined with sincerity, and courage combined with justice. If these are apparent, and that continuously, how fortunate it will be.” — Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (trans. Allen)
“Above all, in every state it is necessary, both by the laws and every other method possible, to prevent those who are employed by the public from being venal.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)