God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men.
Beethoven
What humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and wellnigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone, deterred me. Ah! How could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life—so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either.
Beethoven
Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing!–and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! For I am deaf!
Beethoven
Doubt is named doubt because it resembles truth. As for lovers of Allah, their conviction serves them as light and the direction of the right path serves as their guide; while the enemies of Allah, in time of doubt call to misguidance in the darkness of doubt and their guide is blindness. One who fears death cannot escape it nor can one who fears for eternal life secure it.
Imam Ali, Nahjul Balagha – Sermon 38
Praise is due to Allah whose worth cannot be described by speakers, whose bounties cannot be counted by calculators and whose claim (to obedience) cannot be satisfied by those who attempt to do so, whom the height of intellectual courage cannot appreciate, and the divings of understanding cannot reach; He for whose description no limit has been laid down, no eulogy exists, no time is ordained and no duration is fixed. He brought forth creation through His Omnipotence, dispersed winds through His Compassion, and made firm the shaking earth with rocks.
The foremost in religion is the acknowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His Oneness, the perfection of believing in His Oneness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him.
Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence. He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence.
Imam Ali, Nahjul Balagha – Sermon 1
To shoot a man because you disagree with him about Hegel’s dialectic is after all to honour the human spirit.
George Steiner
I had gone to spend a few days in the country at the home of a good mother of a family who took great care of her children and their education. One morning when I was present at the lessons of the eldest, his governor, who had instructed him very well in ancient history, was reviewing the history of Alexander. He took up the famous story about Philip, the physician, which has been a subject of painting, and which was surely well worth the effort. The governor, a man of merit, made several reflections on Alexander’s intrepidity, which did not please me at all, but which I avoided disputing so as not to discredit him in his pupil’s mind. At table they did not fail, according to the French method, to make the little gentleman babble a great deal. The vivacity natural to his age, along with the expectation of certain applause, made him reel off countless stupidities, in the midst of which from time to time there came a few lucky words which caused the rest to be forgotten. Finally came the story of Philip, the physician. He told it quite clearly and with much grace. After the ordinary tribute of praises exacted by the mother and expected by the son, there was discussion about what he had said. The greater number blamed the temerity of Alexander; some, after the governor’s example, admired his firmness and his courage—which made me understand that none of those present saw wherein lay the true beauty of this story. “As for me,” I said to them, “it seems that if there is the least courage, the least firmness, in Alexander’s action, it is foolhardy.” Then everyone joined in and agreed that it was foolhardy. I was going to respond and was getting heated when a woman sitting beside me, who had not opened her mouth, leaned toward my ear and said softly to me, “Keep quiet, Jean-Jacques, they won’t understand you.” I looked at her; I was struck; and I kept quiet.
After the dinner, suspecting, on the basis of several bits of evidence, that my young doctor had understood nothing at all of the story he had told so well, I took him by the hand and went for a turn in the park with him. Having questioned him at my ease, I found that more than anyone he admired Alexander’s much-vaunted courage. But do you know in what he found this courage to consist? Solely in having swallowed at a single gulp a bad-tasting potion, without hesitation, without the least sign of repugnance. The poor child, who had been made to take medicine not two weeks before, and who had taken it only after a mighty effort, still had its aftertaste in his mouth. Death and poisoning stood in his mind only for disagreeable sensations; and he did not conceive, for his part, of any other poison than senna. Nevertheless, it must admitted that the hero’s firmness had made a great impression on the boy’s young heart, and that, at the next medicine he would have to swallow, he had resolved to be an Alexander. Without going into clarifications which were evidently out of his reach, I confirmed him in these laudable dispositions; and I went back laughing to myself at the lofty wisdom of fathers and masters who think they teach history to children.
It is easy to put into their mouths the words kings, empires, wars, conquests, revolutions, laws. But if it is a question of attaching distinct ideas to these words, there is a long way from the conversation with Robert the gardener to all these explanations.
Some readers, discontented with the “Keep quiet, Jean-Jacques,” will, I foresee, ask what, after all, do I find so fair in Alexander’s action? Unfortunate people! If you have to be told, how will you understand it? It is that Alexander believed in virtue; it is that he staked his head, his own life on that belief; it is that his great soul was made for believing in it. Oh, what a fair profession of faith was the swallowing of that medicine! No, never did a mortal make so sublime a one. If there is some modern Alexander, let him be showed to me by like deeds.
Rousseau, Emile – Book II
Generally people who know little speak a great deal, and people who know a great deal speak little. It is easy for an ignoramus to find everything he knows important and to tell it to everyone. But a well-informed man does not easily open up his repertoire. He would have too much to say, and he sees yet more to be said after he has spoken. He keeps quite.
Rousseau, Emile – Book, IV
The French language is said to be the chastest of languages. For my part, I believe it to be the most obscene. For it seems to me that the chasteness of a language consists not in the careful avoidance of indecent meanings but in not having them. In fact, to avoid them, one must think of them, and there is no language in which it is more difficult to speak purely, in every sense, than in French. The reader, always more clever at finding obscene meanings than the author is at keeping them out, is scandalized and shocked by everything. How could what passes through impure ears not be stained by them? A people with good morals, on the other hand, has appropriate terms for all things, and these terms are always decent because they are always used decently. It is impossible to imagine a language more modest than that of the Bible, precisely because there everything is said with naiveté. To render the same things immodest, it suffices to translate them into French.
Rousseau, Emile – Book IV
I heard the late Lord Hyde tell the story of one of his friends who, returning from Italy after three-years absence, wanted to examine his nine- or ten-year-old son’s progress. They went for a walk one evening with the boy and his governor in a field where schoolboys were playing at flying kites. The father asked his son, in passing, “Where is the kite whose shadow is here?” Without hesitation, without lifting his head, the child said, “Over the highway.” “And, indeed,” added Lord Hyde, “the highway was between us and the sun.” The father at this response kissed his son and, leaving his examination at that, went away without saying anything. The next day he sent the governor the title to a lifetime pension in addition to his salary.
What a man that father was, and what a son was promised him! The question suits his age precisely; the response is quite simple. But see what it implies about the incisiveness of the child’s judgment! It is thus that Aristotle’s pupil tamed that famous steed which no horseman had been able to break.
Rousseau, Emile – Book II