Words from the Wise and Otherwise, Part Ten
Dear Reader,
I always find it fun to work through these, not least because they serve as a sort of commonplace book and allow me to pilfer the quasi-commonplace book I once created for work. (I actually do have a personal commonplace book, but I’ll save that discourse for a separate essay.)
This first excerpt just delights me in so many ways. I’m not even sure I agree with it. How about you?
The best quotations, the best translations, the best thefts, are all equally new and original works.
Sir Walter Raleigh. Style. 1904.
So if we pull a “best quotation,” what does that make of us? Are we merely appreciating that which is good, or have we created some space for ourselves beyond the mere nod of approval? Hannah More has thoughts:
A capacity for relishing works of genius is the indubitable sign of a good taste. But if a proper disposition and ability to enjoy the compositions of others, entitle a man to the claim of reputation, it is still a far inferior degree of merit to his who can invent and produce those compositions, the bare disquisition of which gives the critic no small share of fame.
Hannah More. “Miscellaneous observations on genius, taste, good sense, & C.” 1777.
Quite the tension between those two quotations above.
I rather unintentionally selected two pairings of quotes for today, as the next two also have some interaction—this time on the nature of words and their occasional falseness. I suppose they go from highbrow to lowbrow, but that’s only because any invocation of “philosophy” has the veneer of highbrow:
We want philosophers, among other reasons, because the world is full of false philosophy. The way of experience is beset on every hand by a multitude of verbal judgments, of empty phrases, of word-copies, which pass themselves off as the real thing, which pretend to do duty for concrete fact and, by force of their number and importunity, capture our attention and cause the true originals to be overlooked.
L. P. Jacks. “The Usurpation of Language.”1910.
When it comes to revealing false philosophy, you can almost never go wrong with Jonathan Swift—it might even inspire a great book.
There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from others of the faculty, that he ought to have but a short memory, which is necessary according to the various occasions he meets with every hour of differing from himself and swearing to both sides of a contradiction, as he finds the persons disposed with whom he has to deal.
Jonathan Swift. “The Art of Political Lying.” 1710.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. My book project wasn’t funded. And that is that.