Untimely Quotations

[CENTER]The democratic youth . . . lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practising gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy. --Plato[/CENTER]


[CENTER]It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality? --Plato[/CENTER]


[CENTER]The good is the beautiful. --Plato[/CENTER]


[CENTER]At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. --Plato[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Did my heart love till now?[/CENTER]

[CENTER]Forswear it sight, [/CENTER]

[CENTER]For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.[/CENTER]

[CENTER]~ Romeo and Juliet.~[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. --The Bible, 1 John 3:18 NRSV[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. ~Albert Einstein[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue. --Plato[/CENTER]


[CENTER]It was the music of hill and moon, a calling-down music, keening and wild. There was a stag's lowing in it, the murmur of sea against shore. There was moonlight in it and the slow grind of earth against stone. There was harping in it, and the sound of the wind as it sped across the gorse-backed hills.
- Charles de Lint, Into the Green[/CENTER]


[CENTER]It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony. ~Benjamin Britten~[/CENTER]



[CENTER]But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience, the feeling as if a door has opened, and it's all because of that instrument, that incredible, magical instrument. --Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider [/CENTER]


[CENTER]The first and the best victory is to conquer self. --Plato[/CENTER]

[CENTER]Conquer, but don't triumph.
-- Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach [/CENTER]



[CENTER]My God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!
--Robert Clive
(1725-74), British soldier, colonial administrator. Speech, March 1773, to a select committee of the House of Commons, defending himself against charges of embezzlement. Clive was cleared of the charge but committed suicide by stabbing himself in November 1774.[/CENTER]


[CENTER]If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything. - [/CENTER]

[CENTER]-- Malcolm X [/CENTER]


[CENTER]How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character? --Henry David Thoreau [/CENTER]



[CENTER]Virtue is the fount whence honour springs. --Marlowe[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal. --Mrs. Lydia Maria Child[/CENTER]




[CENTER]Virtue is the truest nobility.[/CENTER]

[CENTER]--Miguel de Cervantes[/CENTER]


[CENTER]Stop being humble, you are not that great.- Golda Meir [/CENTER]




[CENTER]Virtue is a mean between vices, remote from both extremes. --Horace[/CENTER]



[CENTER]Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature, moderation and reason. --Cicero[/CENTER]

[CENTER]Nature is a whole which structures the moral and political, providing a schema by which to give content to good and evil, a connection between "is" and "ought." Nature is a system of ends or perfections which is realized and gives meaning to notions of virtue.[/CENTER]

[CENTER]According to the understanding of natural moral law all natural beings, at least all living beings, are directed towards an end, a perfection for which they long; there is a specific perfection which belongs to each specific nature; there is especially perfection of man which is determined by the nature of man as the rational and social animal. Nature supplies the standard, a standard wholly independent of man's will; this implies that nature is good. Because man has a definite place within the whole, a very exalted place; one can say that man is the measure of all things or that man is the microcosm, but he occupies that place by nature; man has his place in an order which he did not originate. "Man is the measure of all things" is the very opposite of "Man is the master of all things." Man has a place within the whole: man's power is limited; man cannot overcome the limitations of his nature. The good life is the life according to nature, which means to stay within certain limits; virtue is essentially moderation...Not the maximum of pleasures but the purest pleasures are desirable; happiness depends decisively on the limitation of our desires. [/CENTER]

[CENTER]...ancient natural law is primarily and mainly an objective "rule and measure," a binding order prior to, and independent of, the human will, while modern natural law is, or tends to be, primarily and mainly a series of "rights," of subjective claims, originating in the human will.[/CENTER]

[CENTER]Ancient natural law is as an order seen as a model. The classical notion of "nature" is what is given prior to human willing. It is objective substance. [/CENTER]


[CENTER]Natural moral standards arise when we ask the question: what is the best human life? --Leo Strauss[/CENTER]


[CENTER]To be loved, be lovable. --Ovine [Publius Ovidius Naso][/CENTER]