Григорий Сковорода

♦ Без зерна орех ничто же есть, а без сердца – человек.

♦ Весьма немалое дело – узнать себя.

♦ Всех наук семена сокрыты внутри человека, тут их тайный источник.

♦ Для того нам внушается тьма, чтобы открылся свет.

♦ Многие, что сами сделать не в силах, в том прочим верить не могут.

English:

Sappho

♦ O Venus, beauty of the skies, To whom a thousand temples rise, Gaily false in gentle smiles, Full of love-perplexing wiles; O goddess, from my heart remove The wasting cares and pains of love. If ever thou hast kindly heard A song in soft distress preferred, Propitious to my tuneful vow, O gentle goddess, hear me now. Descend, thou bright immortal guest, In all thy radiant charms confessed. Thou once didst leave almighty Jove And all the golden roofs above; The car thy wanton sparrows drew, Hovering in air they lightly flew; As to my bower they winged their way I saw their quivering pinions play.

Vincent Van Gogh

♦ But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

♦ Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

♦ Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

♦ I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Friedrich Nietzsche

♦ How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.

♦ What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

♦ The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

♦ In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

♦ Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

♦ The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn

♦ Try to put well in practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about.

Virgil

♦ You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.

♦ Death twitches my ear. Live, he says, I am coming.

♦ I have lived, and I have run the course which fortune allotted me; and now my shade shall descend illustrious to the grave.

♦ Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere.

♦ Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?

♦ Roman, remember that you shall rule the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to make peace the custom, to spare the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low.

«quem te», inquit, «reddidissem si te vivum invenissem poetarum maxime».

«What would I have made of you, greatest of poets», he said, «had I found you alive»!