A garland of quotations XXVIII
Culled from the finest lushes in literary history, and re-woven every Monday
The wine we really drink is our own blood.
•Rumi, Divan-Shamsi Tabriz (ca. 1247).
Never smell of wine, lest you hear said of you those words of the philosopher: “This is not offering a kiss but proffering a cup.”
•Jerome, letter 52 (394).
Ques. What is the origin of the history of Bacchus?
Ans. He was probably some prince who taught the people to till the ground, and cultivate the vine. They disgraced his memory in after times by the drunken revels they held in his honor.
•Catherine Anne White, The Student's Mythology (1888).
Very few die at all, most are taken.
When a man dies, he does not die at all, but the daoine maithe take him away.
No-one dies, but the daoine maithe take him away, and leave something else in his place.
Not one in twenty dies a true death, they all pass into another life.
•statements by C20 Gaelic speakers quoted in Dorena Allen, “Orpheus and Orfeo: The Dead and the Taken” (1964).
It is an interesting fact that among Napoleon’s papers were found some notes on Geography written when a boy, and these close with the words—“Sainte-Hélène—petite ile.”
•H.B. Wheatley, How to Form a Library 2nd ed. (1886).
To bear insults is best, like the earth
Which bears and maintains its diggers.
•Thiruvalluvar, Tirukkural (undateable).
Never had the Lord of Troneck met so savage a ferryman!
•Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200).
Take mee this whip, I will teach thee the use of it, it will be more profitable to thee then this harsh Latin.
•The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon, Containing the Wonderfull Things He Did in His Life (1550?).
Knowest thou not that the deeper the sun shines, the hotter it pierces; so the more thy art is famous whilst thou art here, the greater shall be thy name when thou art gone.
•Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserued Death of Doctor John Faustus (1592).
When Saturn did live, there lived no poor, The king and beggar with roots did dine, With lily, germander, and sops-in-wine, With sweet-briar And bon-fire And strawberry wire And columbine. •“Lily, Germander, and Sops-in-Wine” (C16).
Sources: Rumi: John Moyne & Coleman Barks, eds., Unseen Rain: Quatrains of Rumi (Shambala, 2006); Jerome: quoted in Betty Radice, trans., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Penguin 1974); Allen: Medium Ævum, vol. XXXIII, #2, 1964; Thiruvalluvar: trans. P. S. Sundaram, The Kural (Penguin, 1991); Nibelungenlied: trans. A. T. Hatto (Penguin, 1969); “Lily”: in Tom Boggs, ed., Fifty One Neglected Lyrics (Macmillan, 1937); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.