Sublime

The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.

Alfonso X of Spain, nicknamed El Sabio, “the wise,” had as a maxim: Burn old logs. Drink old wine. Read old books. Keep old friends. The insightful and luckily nonacademic historian Tom Holland once commented: “The thing I most admire about the Romans was the utter contempt they were capable of showing the cult of youth.” He also wrote: “The Romans

Your Turn: You Only Know What You Make My favorite quote about creativity is from the eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum ipsum factum. Translated to English, it means “We only know what we make.”

Avicenna invented a formula, which was repeated by Averroes and Albertus Magnus: “Thought brings about the generality in forms.”

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote. It is just the same with the different periods in a man's life; and yet often, in the one case no less than in the other, it is a mistaken opinion.

rhetor doing the work of a philosopher.” It might be more accurate to say that he was a critic doing the work of a prophet.

‘Nemo laeditur nisi a se ipso’,

It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima.

Peut-être, pensait-il, la source de tout art et sans doute aussi de toute pensée est-elle la crainte de la mort.