Term
| "I am committed to this enterprise: to climb the mountain, to cut down the cedar, and leave behind me an enduring name” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Enkidu, why are you cursing the woman, the mistress who taught you to eat bread fit for gods and drink wine of kings?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “As for you, -----, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its foundation terrace, and examine well the brickwork; see if it is not of burnt bricks; and did not the seven wise men lay these foundations?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” |
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Definition
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Term
| “You speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die” |
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Definition
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Term
| “What strange talk you permit yourself, Telémakhos. / A god could save the man by simply wishing it – / from the farthest shore in the world” |
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Definition
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Term
| “My lady goddess, here is no cause for anger. / My quiet Penélopê – how well I know - / would seem a shade before your majesty, / death and old age being unknown to you, / while she must die. Yet, it is true, each day / I long for home, long for the sight of home” (Homer 5. 223-230). |
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Definition
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Term
| “She faced him, waiting. And ----- came, / debating inwardly what he should do: embrace this beauty’s knees in supplication? / or stand apart, and, using honeyed speech, / inquire the way to town, and beg some clothing?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “We would entreat you, great Sir, have a care / for the gods’ courtesy; Zeus will avenge / the unoffending guest” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Whoever gets around you must be sharp / and guileful as a snake; even a god / might bow to you in ways of dissimulation. / You! You chameleon!” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Would not another wandering man, in joy, / make haste home to his wife and children? Not / you, not yet” |
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Definition
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Term
| “They do not understand how, though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a backwards-turning attunement like that of the bow and lyre” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Just one story of a route/is still left: that it is. On this [route] there are signs/very many, that what-is is ungenerated and imperishable,/a whole of a single kind, unshaken, and complete./Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since it is now, all together/one...” |
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Definition
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Term
| “---: ‘Keep it hidden, I’ll do the same.’ Antigone: ‘For god’s sake, speak out. You’ll be more enemy to me/If you are silent. Proclaim it to the world!’” “Ismene: ‘Keep it hidden, I’ll do the same.’ ---: ‘For god’s sake, speak out. You’ll be more enemy to me/If you are silent. Proclaim it to the world!’ |
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Definition
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Term
| ‘I’ll take her off the beaten track, where no one’s around,/And I’ll bury her alive underground, in a grave of stone./I’ll leave her only as much food as religious law prescribes,/So that the city will not be cursed for homicide’” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Then go be ruler of a desert, all alone. You’d do it well” |
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Definition
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Term
| ‘You don’t know what your life is—neither what you’re doing nor who you are’ |
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Definition
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Term
| "Ah!/Do you want to see those women sitting together in the mountains?” |
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Definition
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Term
| And truly I seem to myself to see two suns/and a double Thebes’ |
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Definition
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Term
| “Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity?’” |
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Definition
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Term
“Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me
that you may be justified?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “This, it would be claimed, is strong evidence that no man is just of his own free will, but only under compulsion, and that no man thinks justice pays him personally, since he will always do wrong when he gets the chance” |
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Definition
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Term
| “I accordingly propose that we start our inquiry with the community, and then proceed to the individual and see if we can find in the conformation of the smaller entity anything similar to what we have found in the larger” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The just man will not allow the three elements which make up his inward self to trespass on each other’s functions or interfere with each other” |
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Definition
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Term
| “So opinion is neither ignorance nor knowledge” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And so in excellence and happiness the relations between the different types of individual will correspond to the relations between the different types of state?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “...we are concerned with the most important of issues, the choice between a good and an evil life, and guessing isn’t good enough...” |
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Definition
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Term
| “You know that we always postulate in each case a single form for each set of particular things, to which we apply the same name?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And we should give her defenders, men who aren’t poets themselves but who love poetry, a chance of defending her in prose and proving that she doesn’t only give pleasure but brings lasting benefit to human life and human society” ( |
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Definition
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Term
| “ ...by simple bodies I mean those which possess a principle of movement in their own nature...” |
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Definition
| On the heavens, Aristotle |
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Term
| “And I think that it is but fitting that even you, who are the noblest of rulers, should pursue the inquiry into the greatest of all subjects and that philosophy should entertain no trivial thoughts, but make the noblest among men welcome to these her gifts” |
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Definition
| On the Universe, Pseudo-Aristotle |
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Term
“Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative
to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it” |
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Definition
| Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle |
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Term
| “Happiness, therefore, must be some form of contemplation” |
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Definition
| Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle |
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Term
“And so through Sinon’s treacherous art / His story was believed, and we were taken / With
cunning..." |
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Definition
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Term
| “Out of my mind, I took up arms—no battle plan, / But my soul burned to gather a war party / And storm this citadel. Rage and fury / Sent my mind reeling, and my only thought / Was how glorious it is to die in combat” |
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Definition
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Term
| “----, Jupiter’s message / Still ringing in his ears, held his eyes steady / And struggled to suppress the love in his heart” |
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Definition
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Term
| “If the Fates would allow me to lead my own life / And to order my priorities as I see fit, / The welfare of Troy would be my first concern, / And the remnants of my own beloved people” ( |
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Definition
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Term
| “Do not yield, but oppose your troubles / All the more boldly, as far as your fate / And fortune allow” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The pleasure they took in arms and chariots / When they were alive, in keeping sleek horses, / Is still theirs now beneath the earth” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Aeneas was moved / To wonder and joy by the images of things / He could not fathom, and he lifted to his shoulder / The destiny of his children’s children” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Juno, my wife, / How will it end?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law” |
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Definition
| Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul |
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Term
| “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” |
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Definition
| Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul |
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Term
“In venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud word but in that way of prayer
which is always within our power, leaning in soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone” ( |
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Definition
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Term
| “...the Soul [is] an utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of The One. But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must look to its own original ...” |
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Definition
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Term
“For even when we are not engaged in intellection, the symbols themselves, by themselves,
perform their appropriate work ...” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And let there be no astonishment if in this connection we speak of a pure and divine form of matter; for matter also issues from the father and creator of all...” |
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Definition
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Term
“By an undivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything, shedding all and freed
from all, you will be uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything that is” |
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Definition
| The Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius |
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Term
| “If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge” |
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Definition
| The Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius |
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Term
“At the time of my infancy I must have acted reprehensibly; but since I could not understand the
person who admonished me, neither custom nor reason allowed me to be reprehended” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “It is from love of your love that I make the act of recollection. The recalling of my wicked ways is bitter in my memory, but I do it so that you may be sweet to me...” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality. My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “Friendship can be a dangerous enemy, a seduction of the mind lying beyond the reach of investigation” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “I loved beautiful things of a lower order, and I was going down to the depths” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “Where was I when I was seeking you? You were there before me, but I had departed from myself. I could not even find myself, much less you” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “The nub of the problem was to reject my own will and to desire yours” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “Yet the Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
| “...you secretly made use of their and my perversity” |
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Definition
| Confessions, St. Augustine |
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Term
The suitable ruler of the excellent city “holds the most perfect rank of humanity and has reached
the highest degree of felicity” |
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Definition
| The Prefect State, Al-Farabi |
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Term
| “The more superior the excellence of the First is to the excellence of any of them, the more superior the joy it feels when thinking the First will be to what it feels when thinking its own essence” |
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Definition
| The Prefect State, Al-Farabi |
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Term
| “The excellent city resembles the perfect and healthy body, all of whose limbs co-operate to make the life of the animal perfect and to preserve it in this state” |
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Definition
| The Prefect State, Al-Farabi |
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Term
| “Those who merely think and have not reached the level of love are like the blind” |
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Definition
| Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Tufayl |
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Term
| “The body now seemed something low and worthless compared to the being he was convinced had lived in it for a time and then departed” |
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Definition
| Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Tufayl |
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Term
| “His mind caught fire. Reason and tradition were one within him” |
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Definition
| Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Tufayl |
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Term
“It was necessary for man’s salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God, besides
philosophical science built up by human reason” |
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Definition
| Suma Theologia, St. Thomas Aquinas |
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Term
| “The very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds, and as a defence against the ridicule of the impious, according to the words Give not that which is holy to dogs (Matth. vii. 6)” |
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Definition
| Suma Theologia, St. Thomas Aquinas |
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Term
| “Now to know the first intelligible principles is the action belonging to the human species. Wherefore all men enjoy in common this power which is the principle of this action: and this power is the active intellect. But there is no need for it to be identical in all” |
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Definition
| Suma Theologia, St. Thomas Aquinas |
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Term
| Beatrice is “a miracle, whose root, namely that of the miracle, is the miraculous Trinity itself” |
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Definition
| Vita Nuova, Dante Aligheri |
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Term
| Inferno is the locality of “souls who lost the good of intellect” |
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Definition
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Term
| “violence can be done to God, to self, / or to one’s neighbor” |
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Definition
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Term
| : “when the faculty of intellect / is joined with brute force and with evil will, / no man can win against such an alliance.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “. . . pity / blurred my senses; I swooned as though to die, / and fell to Hell’s floor as a body, dead, falls” |
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Definition
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Term
| “I did not open them. / To be mean to him was a generous reward” |
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Definition
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Term
| "...In this alone we suffer:/cut off from hope, we live on in desire.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And he: ‘Remember your philosophy: / The closer a thing comes to its perfection, / the more keen will be its pleasure or its pain’” |
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Definition
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Term
Dante, Purgatory
8. Neither Creator nor his creatures ever,
my son, lacked love. There are, as well you know,
two kinds: the natural love, the rational.
Natural love may never be at fault;
the other may... |
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Definition
| Purgatory, Dante Aligheri |
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Term
| "Not what I did, but what I did not do / cost me the sight of that high Sun ...” |
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Definition
| Purgatory, Dante Aligheri |
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Term
| “This Mount is not like the others: at the start / it is most difficult to climb, but then, / the more one climbs the easier it becomes.” |
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Definition
| Purgatory, Dante Aligheri |
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Term
I sensed the regal sternness of her face as she continued in the tone of one who saves the sharpest words until the end:
‘Yes, look at me! Yes, I am Beatrice!
So, you at last have deigned to climb the mount?
You learned at last that here lies human bliss?’ |
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Definition
| Purgatory, Dante Aligheri |
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Term
| “The dull mind rises in truth through that which is material / And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion” |
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Definition
| De Administratione, Abbot Suger |
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Term
“And there before my eyes with wings spread wide / that splendid image shone, shaped by the
souls / rejoicing in their interwoven joy” |
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Definition
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Term
“‘. . . think carefully what love is and you’ll see/ such discord has no place within these rounds,/
since to be here is to exist in Love.’” |
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Definition
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Term
| “‘The greatest gift that our bounteous Lord / bestowed as the Creator, in creating, / the gift He cherishes the most, the one / most like Himself, was freedom of the will’” |
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Definition
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Term
| “...I turned around to ask my lady things/ that to my mind were still not clear enough./ What I expected was not what I saw!/ I thought to see Beatrice there but saw an elder in the robes of Heaven’s saints” |
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Definition
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Term
| “This music raised my soul to heights of love...” |
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Definition
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Term
| “study the divine writings deeply, lest we should think of them faster than we think...” |
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Definition
| Letter to Gregory of Caesarea, Origen |
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