". . . but for the illnesses and afflictions of the mind philosophy alone is the remedy. For only through philosophy does one attain knowledge of what is honorable and what shameful, what is just and what unjust, what, in brief, is to be chosen and what avoided, how a man must bear himself in relations with the gods, with his parents, with his elders, with the laws, with strangers, with those in authority, with women, with children, with servants . . . As a general statement, the same assertion may be made in regard to moral excellence that we are in the habit of making in regard to the arts and sciences, namely, that there must be a concurrence of three things in order to produce perfectly right action, and these are: nature, reason and habit. By reason I mean the act of learning, and by habit constant practice . . . For nature without learning is a blind thing, and learning without nature is an imperfect thing, and practice without both is an ineffective thing . . ." --Plutarch, The Education of Children.

"Virtue then is the in-between state between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency . . . The virtues are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit. . . .For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in civil society."" --Aristotle, combining excerpts from Ethics & Politics

Hamlet:
Poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment
Without the which we are pictures and mere beasts.
--William shakespeare, in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

". . . [N]otice what errors we are ourselves are most prone to (as different men are inclined by nature to different faults) and we shall discover what these are by observing what pleasure and pain we experience-- then we must drag ourselves away in the opposite direction, for by steering wide of our besetting error we shall make a middle course. . . . [W]e must in everything be most of all on our guard against what is pleasant and against pleasure; for when pleasure is on trial we are not impartial judges." --Aristotle, Ethics.

"In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, - free and brave. . . . The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, - but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, - some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career, do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience, - patience; - with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world." Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

"In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity--please observe, a plodding mediocrity--for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry."-Justice Benjamin Cardozo

"The Darwinian process is ruthless, because it depends on failure." Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds

"The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest-- sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest--are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second." --John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

[American business titans'] "daring, cunning, ruthless pursuit of purpose, large sweep of action-are their attractive qualities, and, in their field of activity, the great qualities; even though they may happen to be on the wrong side of the ledger in a Christian account book." --Max Lerner

"But we are beset by all sort of temptations to run away from a high and noble way of living. The line of least resistance for us is the common highway of money-getters and place-winners; and the moment a man gives evidence of ability, the whole world urges him to put it to immediate use. Our public opinion identifies the good with the useful, and al else is visionary and unreal. The average man controls us not only in politics, but in religion, in art, and in literature. To turn away from material good in order to gain spiritual and intellectual benefit is held to be evidence of a feeble or perverted understanding." John L. Spalding [Bishop of Peoria] in Education and the Higher Life

 [Riches:] "When man, on first encountering me, opens his doors and takes me in, Pride, Folly, Arrogance, Effeminacy, Insolence, Deceit, and myriads more enter unobserved in my train. Once his soul is obsessed by all these, he admires what he should not admire and wants what he should shun; he worships me, their progenitor. because I am attended by them, and he would endure anything in the world rather than put up with losing me." Lucian, Timon, The Misanthrope.

". . . the ambition of a silly fellow will be to have a fine equipage, a fine house, and fine clothes; things which anybody, that has as much money, may have as well as he; for they are all to be bought; but the ambition of a man of sense and honor is to be distinguished by a character and reputation of knowledge, truth and virtue--things which are not to be bought, and that can only be acquired by a good head and a good heart . . . Riches, power and greatness may be taken away from us by the violence and injustice of others or inevitable accidents, but virtue depends only on ourselves and nobody can take it away." --Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield.

--Keith Preston

"Now absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of education, think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the teachers and attendants of childhood, in the form of desires, which are now, as it were, unchained . . . .For they alone, having learned to wish for what they ought, live as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one's mind many times involves but little freedom of will." Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures

"Only the brave and the wise are free." --Gilbert Highet

"O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni "[Oh what a misfortune to be without balls]-- Voltaire, Candide

"For a coward, and a weakling, made dissolute by wealth and soft living, is not, I swear, worth a dog or even an ass." --Plutarch, How To Study Poetry.

"As the proverb says, 'there is no leisure for slaves,' and those who cannot face danger like men are the slaves of any invaders . . . Courage and endurance are required for business and intellectual virtue for leisure, temperance and justice for both, more especially in times of peace and leisure, for war compels men to be just and temperate, whereas the enjoyment of good fortune and the leisure which comes from peace tends to breed hubris." Aristotle, Politics

"When I observe that there are different ways of surveying. My employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct." --Thoreau, Life Without Principle

"Liberty is an essence so volatile that it will escape any vessel, no matter how corked." ­Judge Learned Hand

--W.H. Auden

"So with evils: either they are vices, folly, cowardice, injustice and the like; or things which partake of vice, including vicious acts and wicked persons as well as their accompaniments, despair, moroseness and the like." Diogenes Laertius, Zeno.

Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain; and it is hardly possible to step aside from the pursuit of truth without falling a victim either to your stupidity or else to your vanity. Stupidity will the attach you to received opinions, and you will stick in the mud; or vanity will set you hunting for novelty, and you will find mare's nests." A.E. Housman, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism

"It is always instructive to ask a relativist how he raises his child." Annie Dillard, Living By Fiction

"Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment." Rita Mae Brown, Rita Will

"There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at the same time." --Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield to his Son

". . . work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice and need." [the wise old Turk who with his children cultivates his garden .] Voltaire, Candide

"All the pessimism and lamentation came from the idlers, while those who were laboring to the limit possessed their souls, and faced the future with confidence." --Edith Wharton, Looking Backward

"The mental harass of an uncertain life must be far more irksome than the ennui of the most monotonous employment." Matthew Arnold, letter to Arthur Hugh Clough December 14, 1852.

"The history of literature, of science, of art, of industrial achievements--all testify to the truth that success is only the last term of what looked like a series of failures. What is true of the great achievements of history, is also true of the little achievements of the observant cultivator of his own understanding." John Morely, On Popular Culture

Hamlet:
O that this two too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixe'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on'ty ah, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

"Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags, and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against it want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it. . . " -- Blaise Pascal

"Love of literary fame [was] my ruling passion." --David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature .

"What is sought by the sacred bards but fame alone? To this end are all our great labors." Ovid, The Art of Love.

"Unpraised, I find it hard to start writing in the morning, but the dejection lasts only 30 minutes, and once more I forget all about it. One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, silence there, Murry and Eliot ordered, and not me; the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art. . . . Directly I stop working I feel that I am sinking down, down. And as usual I feel that if I sink further I shall reach the truth. That is the only mitigation: a kind of nobility. Solemnity. I shall make myself face the fact that there is nothing-nothing for any of us. Work. Reading, writing are all disguises; and relations with people. Yes, even having children would be useless . . . Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down." The Diary of Virginia Woolf.

"I won't have anything to do with the Nobel Prize: it's a pain in the . . (LAUGHS) I don't like honors. The prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use [my work.] those are the real things; the honors are unreal to me." Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

"A man who depends for his prominence on his ability to impress and convince his fellows on the platform, in the pulpit, in boardrooms, conferences and committees, develops an effective personality. A writer luckily does not need to . . . I prefer listening to talking, except on special occasions." Alec Waugh, The Early Years

"Both Milton and Dante may certainly be viewed as moralists and Christian propagandists who employed their superlative poetic skills to promote particular theologies and sell the benefits of good behavior. But the sources of inspiration don't really matter. What counts is that the poems are, all of them, perfectly splendid." --Janet Lembke.

"Lessons, my dear Sir, are never wanting. Life and History are full. The Loss of Paradise, by eating a forbidden apple, has been many thousand years a Lesson to Mankind; but not much regarded. Moral reflections, wise Maxims, religious Terrors, have little Effect upon Nations when they contradict a present Passion, Prejudice, Imagination, Enthusiasm or Caprice . . . . I have long been settled in my own opinion, that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their Vanity, their Pride, their Resentment or Revenge, or their Avarice or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.. . . money and fear are the only two agents at Algiers." John Adams to Jefferson.

"We cannot act with too much caution in our disputes. Anger produces anger; and differences, that might be accommodated by kind and respectful behavior, may, by imprudence, be enlarged to an incurable rage. In quarrels between countries, as well as I those between individuals, when they have risen to a certain height, the first cause of dissension is no longer remembered, the minds of the parties being wholly engaged in recollecting and resenting the mutual expressions of their dislike. When feuds have reached that fatal point, all considerations of reason and equity vanish; and a blind fury governs, or rather confounds all things. A people no longer regards their interest, but the gratification of their wrath. . . . Wise and good men in vain oppose the storm, and may think themselves fortunate, if in attempting to preserve their ungrateful fellow citizens, they do not ruin themselves." John Dickinson [opposing rash disrespectful action against Britain] in Letters from a Farmer

Prospero:
". . . Yet, with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue, than in vengeance.
--William Shakespeare, The Tempest

"In our time the relationship between art and the production of civic virtue is thin to the point of vanishing . . . literary activity is increasingly pursued in the academy where proficiency is measured by academic standards and rewarded by the gatekeepers of an academic guild." --Stanley Fish.

[At CBS] ". . . I learned the rules of broadcast journalism, the first of which is that you don't have time for extended debates when a story moves on the wires, so you'd better know your profession before you sit at that desk. . . . I thought of CBS as 'the Schoolmarm,' for flourishing within it was the sometimes tender impulse to provide moral instruction to a nation badly in need of it." --Peggy Noonan.

"I wouldn't tell Scottie this but I am really not very concerned about whether she remains a virgin after the age of twenty, but I think it is of the greatest importance that the girl doesn't throw herself away for any trivial or inessential reason, and every year makes such a difference. . . . My theory follows Pope's statement that Evil (I am using the word in its old fashioned sense) first looked upon as terrible, longer looked upon as tolerable, finally becomes attractive. He said it much better, with a beautiful rhyme." F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to H.L. Mencken, April 23, 1934.

[De Sade's explanation for holding three young girls in his castle for six months until their parents charged him with abduction and rape: " . . .the result of the trifling weakness (I must confess) of being a trifle too fond of women." [It was merely a rumor] "spread all over Paris that I was carrying out experiments, and that my garden was the graveyard in which I buried the corpses which I had used for my purposes." [The human bones discovered there, he explains] "were brought by a girl whose name is Du Plan, she liked to decorate a little room with the bones, which were then buried in the garden when the joke was over." [The abortion recipe found in his wallet was one] "any choirboy would know;" [the poisons, specifically] "Hellebore which the ancients used to rub on their swords when they wanted to poison the blades;" [merely part of his innocuous general inquiry into ointments the ancients used;] "I am guilty of nothing more than simple libertineage such as is practised by all men more or less according to their natural temperaments or tendencies." The Marquis de Sade, letter from prison to his wife Madame de Sade, 20 Febuary 1781.

[An example of the problem of translation by a moralizing editor]: "They all have their wives in common and nobody is jealous of his neighbor; in this point they out-Plato Plato. Complaisance is the universal rule." [But the actual translation of the last line is] "and the boys supply themselves willingly without opposition." [Another example:] "About love-making their attitude is such that they bill and coo openly, in plain sight of everyone, without discrimination, and think it no shame." [Actually, what happens out in the open is not mere billling and cooing.] Lucian, A True Story, [A.M. Harmon, translator; corrections by your correspondent. The Nineteeenth Century translations are notoriously prim, but we are informed at least that the Loeb Classical Library is now printing an un-truncated version of Aristophanes.]

"But if we challenge on the ground of chastity, I read a part of the Athenian sentence on Socrates, declared a corrupter of lads. The Christians, so far as sex is concerned, is content with the woman." Tertullian.

 ". . . As in Sodom and Gomorrah and nearby cities like them, those fornicating and going after vile flesh, are shown as an example, suffering the flames of eternal justice . . . these cynical men will follow their lusts, seeking after the profane, and divide themselves apart from their natural spirit." --Jude 7; 18 & 19.

"The French can treat any subject with wit, and where one laughs there is no immorality; immorality and seriousness begin together." --Oscar Wilde, letter to Leonard Smithers, 24 May 1898.

Lycinus: "As you know, there is a saying of the poets: 'I hate to drink with he that hath a memory."' Lucian, The Carousel.

"In the ancient prison of Auburn, isolation without labor has been tried, and those prisoners who have not become insane or did not die of despair, have returned to society only to commit new crimes. . . . . In Baltimore, the system of labor without isolation is trying at this moment, and seems not to promise happy results . . . [The Walnut Street prison] had two principal faults: it corrupted by contamination those who worked togther. It corrupted by indolence, the individuals who were plunged into solitude. . . .Whoever has studied the interior of prisons and the moral state of their inmates, has become convinced that communication between those persons renders their moral reformation impossible, and becomes even for them the inevitable cause of an alarming corruption . . . . Every time that convicts are put together, there exists necessarily a fatal influence of some upon the others, because, in the association of the wicked, it is not the less guilty who act upon the more criminal, but the more depraved who influence those who are less so. . . Such is the fatal influence of the wicked upon each other, that one finished rogue in a prison suffices as a model for all who see and hear him, to fashion their vices and immorality upon his. Nothing, certainly is more fatal to society than this course in mutual evil instruction in prisons; and it is well ascertained that we owe to this dangerous contagion a peculiar population of malefactors, which every day becomes more numerous and more alarming." Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States (1835)

--Dorothy Parker