A garland of quotations LXXXII
Culled from the finest fencers in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday
Dog, dog! Restrain yourself, my shameless spirit!…Much knowledge is a sore ill for anyone who cannot control his tongue; he is like a child with a knife.
•Callimachus, fragment (C3 BC)
To write all things in a book is to leave a sword in the hands of a child.
•Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (ca. 200).
A bayonet piercing a human heart makes me tremble. However, this bayonet is guiltless, and only a child would wish to break it.
•Joseph Fouché, on the destruction of Lyon (1794).
“But on thy life, O Queen! answer me this: I slew a man in battle, and yet I slew him not. How was that?”
The Queen sang—
“From thee his death did come, my lord,
Yet not by thee, but by thy sword.
Such difference, as I have heard,
Is not in deed, but in the word.
Howe'er it came, the blood was spilt,
The deed was thine and thine the guilt;
But if I beat in riddles, see!
Thou wilt have brought thy death on thee.”
•Charles Godfrey Leland, The Book of One Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892).
If the sword of the world moves from its place, it will not sever a vein unless God wills it.
•Babur, Baburnama (1530).
For what
shall I handle a dagger
O lord?
What can I pull it our of,
or stab it in,
when You are all the world,
O Râmanâtha?
•Dêvara Dâsimayya, Vacana 44 (C10).
How do you get comfortable with a sword in your guts?
•Walker Percy, Lancelot (1977).
He that taught Men to eat a Dagger, began first with a Pen knife.
•Lord Halifax, The Character of a Trimmer (1684).
From the axe there is always anxiety. If you think you are free from anxiety, you are not free from an axe.
•Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland (1188)
If one man were to run amok with a sword in the market-place, and everybody tried to get out of his way, I should not allow that this man alone had courage and all the rest were contemptible cowards. The truth is, that a desperado and a man who sets some value on his life do not meet on even terms.
•Chang Yü, commentary on Sun Tzu (C13?).
Severian…did not choose to drink poison, or to hang himself, but was resolved to find out some new and tragical way of dying; that accordingly, having some large cups of very fine glass, as soon as he had taken the resolution to finish himself, he broke one of them in pieces, and with a fragment of it cut his throat; he would not make use of sword or spear, that his death might be more noble and heroic.
•Lucian, Instructions for Writing History (C2).
Sources: Callimachus: quoted in Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (UCAP, 1990); Clement: quoted in Borges, Other Inquisitions (Touchstone, 1965); Fouché: quoted in Alan Schom, Napoleon Bonaparte (HarperCollins, 1997); Babur: trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (Modern, 2002); Dêvara Dâsimayya: in A. K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva (Penguin, 1973); Giraldus: trans. J.J. O’Meara, The History and Topography of Ireland (Penguin, 1982); Chang: quoted in L. Giles, ed., Sun Tzu, The Art of War (B&N 2003); Lucian: trans. Thomas Francklin, Trips to the Moon (1887); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.
