Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

He strikes at all who fears all.

Emperor Claudius, as quoted by Montaigne

Sunday, May 12, 2019

There is no beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man.

Attributed by Montaigne to Emperor Julian (the Apostate)

Friday, February 01, 2019

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, history revealed no pattern other than the regular growth and decline of civilization—a rhythm not essentially different from those found in the natural world. There was no prospect of indefinite improvement. Judged by the standards of the time, civilization might improve for a while. But eventually the process would stall, then go into reverse. Rooted in the innate defects of the human animal, cycles of this kind could not be overcome. If the gods intervened, the result was only to make the human world even more unpredictable and treacherous.

 Christopher Beha, The Myth of Progress, in the February 21, 2019 New York Review of Books.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

He who has neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist nor fly, what can we do with him?

Michel de Montaigne

Monday, September 15, 2014

What we look for does not happen;
what we least expect is fashioned by the gods.


Euripides, Bacchae (as quoted from Robin Robertson in the Sept. 25, 2014 New York Review)