Laudator Temporis Acti

Dave Lull draws my attention to Peter Stothard's Gentle sex and free money, which starts out:

List the twelve things we need in order to be happy.

And which is the poem most often translated into English from another language?

Stothard goes on to discuss Martial 10.47. I doubt that it is "the poem most often translated into English from another language," but it is indeed popular, as the list provided by Stothard shows. One of the translations in his list is by Ben Johnson. I can't find it on the Internet, so I've transcribed it from George Parfitt's edition of Ben Johnson: The Complete Poems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). The original Latin by Martial follows:

The things that make the happy life, are these,
Most pleasant Martial; substance got with ease,
Not laboured for, but left thee by thy sire;
A soil, not barren; a continual fire;
Never at law; seldom in office gowned;
A quiet mind; free powers; and body sound;
A wise simplicity; friends alike-stated;
Thy table without art, and easy-rated;
Thy night not drunken, but from cares laid waste;
No sour, or sullen bed-mate, yet a chaste;
Sleep, that will make the darkest hours swift-paced;
Will to be, what thou art; and nothing more:
Nor fear thy latest day, nor wish therefore.

Vitam quae faciant beatiorem,
iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
res non parta labore sed relicta;
non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
prudens simplicitas, pares amici;
convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
nox non ebria sed soluta curis;
non tristis torus et tamen pudicus;
somnus qui faciat breves tenebras:
quod sis esse velis nihilque malis;
summum nec metuas diem nec optes.

Related Posts:

• Recipes for Happiness
  
• Translation of Martial 10.47 by Mildmay Fane
  
• Translation of Martial 10.47 by Henry Howard

The OED Online Word of the Day for Jan. 24, 2007 was agony. The first two definitions are:

• Anguish of mind, sore trouble or distress, a paroxysm of grief.
  
• Intensity or paroxysm of pleasure.

If grief and pleasure are considered opposites, then agony is an an auto-antonym, or word that can mean the opposite of itself.

Related posts:

• Auto-Antonyms (Latin sacer, English wold)
  
• Auto-Antonym (Urdu lāg)
  
• An Auto-Antonym? (ἀφυπνόω)
  
• Snob
  
• Two Greek Auto-Antonyms (γενέτης and γενέτειρα)
  

Aurelian Isaïcq writes:

There is too a misanthropic quatrain from Michelangelo Buonarroti (Rima 247). For some reason I prefer the German translation (available at Gutenberg) to Symonds'. I also remember Shakespeare’s (similarly lack of) sleep sonnets xxvii and xxviii.

Rima 247:

Caro m'è 'l sonno, e più l'esser di sasso,
mentre che 'l danno e la vergogna dura;
non veder, non sentir m'è gran ventura;
però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.

John Addington Symonds (1878):

Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
So long as ruin and dishonour reign;
To bear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain;
Then wake me not, speak in an undertone!

Sophie Hasenclever:

Schlaf ist mein Glück; so lange Schmach und Kummer
Auf Erden dauern, besser Stein zu bleiben,
Nicht sehn, nicht hören bei so schnödem Treiben.
Sprich leise drum und stör' nicht meinen Schlummer.

XXVII

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
  Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
  For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

XXVIII

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarr'd the benefit of rest?
When day's oppression is not eas'd by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress'd,
And each, though enemies to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.
  But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
  And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger.

In response to yesterday's post on sleep, Javier Álvarez writes:

There are some remarkable Spanish and Italian texts about sleep and insomnia. Apart from a composition by Quevedo, quoted in Sonnets to Morpheus, I recommend you to read this sonnet of Giovanni della Casa. Unfortunately, I could not find the text of Fernando de Herrera's "Ode to Sleep" in the Internet. It is worth reading. Maybe I'll post it soon in Edad de Oro.

If you follow the link to della Casa's beautiful sonnet, you'll find an English translation by Laurie Stras. Among other Italian poems translated by Stras I see the anonymous Il dolce sonno (Sweet sleep).

Buce of Palookaville, author of Underbelly, also writes:

Re sleep, seems to me that no one beats Shax, in many places but particularly Henry IV:

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?

The words immediately following in Henry IV are perhaps more familiar: "Then, happy low, lie down! / Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Roughly contemporary with Shakespeare is Sir Philip Sidney, who addressed this sonnet to sleep (Astrophel and Stella, XXXIX):

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Finally, Benedetto Accolti wrote an Ode to Sleep, printed in Latin Writings of the Italian Humanists. Selections by Florence Alden Gragg (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), pp. 353-354. I can't find a translation, and I don't have time or energy to translate it myself, but here is the Latin:

Nox ruit et caelum fuscis invecta quadrigis
  umbrosam molli frigore opacat humum
atque adeo curis hominum genus omne repulsis
  languida concepto membra sopore levat.
Nulla tamen fessam reparant oblivia mentem
  et refugis nostras tu quoque, Somne, preces.
Somne, animi requies, curarum, Somne, levamen,
  huc ades et sanctum fer, taciturne, pedem,
imbutumque gerent lethaeo gurgite ramum,
  fac rore immadeant tempora victa levi.
Curarum obstantes demum propelle catervas
  et mihi securo sit tua dona sequi,
ut neque me eversi tangant incommoda saecli
  nec removent tristes tempora saeva metus.
Ipse tibi floresque feram casiamque recentem,
  dulce sonans facili qua fugit unda pede,
et tibi, purpurea insurgat cui vertice crista,
  ales dissecto gutture tinguet humum.
Nunc tua defessos tandem vis alliget artus,
  dum iuvat et caelo lucida signa cadunt.

Quintilian (3.7.28, tr. H. Butler) says, "Panegyrics have been composed on sleep and death." Here's a sonnet on sleep by Wordsworth:

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
  One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
  Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky —
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
  Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
  Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
  And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
  Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
  Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

John G. Fitch, commentary on Seneca, Hercules Furens 1065ff.:

Addresses and prayers to Sleep include Hom. Il. 14.233ff. (by Hera), Eur. Or. 211ff. (by Orestes), Soph. Phil. 827ff. (a choral ode), Hymn. Orph. 85, Ov. Met. 11.623ff. (by Iris), Stat. Silv. 5.4 (by the poet himself), Theb. 10.126ff. (by Iris), Val. Fl. 8.70ff. (by Medea), Sil. 10.343ff. (by Juno).

Related posts:

• Sleep and Death as brothers
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Sophocles' Philoctetes
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Euripides' Orestes
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Seneca's Hercules Furens
  
• Paean to sleep in Carmina Burana
  
• Sonnet on sleep by Keats

See also Michael Hendry's web pages on Sonnets to Morpheus.

The image of the Wheel of Fortune is trite. Euripides, Trojan Women 1203-1206 (tr. David Kovacs), has an more interesting comparison:

That man is a fool who imagines he is firmly prosperous and is glad. For in its very nature fortune, like a crazed man, leaps now in one direction, now in another, and the same man is never fortunate forever.

θνητῶν δὲ μῶρος ὅστις εὖ πράσσειν δοκῶν
βέβαια χαίρει· τοῖς τρόποις γὰρ αἱ τύχαι,
ἔμπληκτος ὡς ἄνθρωπος, ἄλλοτ' ἄλλοσε
πηδῶσι, κοὐδεὶς αὐτὸς εὐτυχεῖ ποτε.

Cf. Poseidon's criticism of Athena (earlier in the same play, 67-68) for switching her favor from Greeks to Trojans:

But why do you leap about so, now with one character, now with another? Why hate and love whomever you choose so excessively?

τί δ' ὧδε πηδᾷς ἄλλοτ' εἰς ἄλλους τρόπους
μισεῖς τε λίαν καὶ φιλεῖς ὃν ἂν τύχῃς;

The same word for leap (πηδάω) occurs in both passages.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (May 6, 1858):

There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed.

Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 26-27:

The earliest surviving version of this ancient Greek myth of origins is the Theogony of Hesiod. It tells of how the original Golden Age declined to Silver and thence to Bronze and finally to the Iron of the present.

Bate is correct in naming Hesiod, but it is in the Works and Days (lines 106-201), not in the Theogony, that Hesiod relates the myth of origins and the ages of men. The Iron Age (Works and Days 182-201, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White) is no myth but reality:

The father will not agree with his children, nor the children with their father, nor guest with his host, nor comrade with comrade; nor will brother be dear to brother as aforetime. Men will dishonour their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them, chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the cost their nurture, for might shall be their right: and one man will sack another's city. There will be no favour for the man who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather men will praise the evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all. And then Aidôs and Nemesis, with their sweet forms wrapped in white robes, will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.

From Seneca's tragedies (tr. John G. Fitch):

Medea 19-20:

For the bridegroom I have a worse prayer in store: may he live.

Mihi peius aliquid, quod precer sponso manet:
vivat.

Thyestes 245-248:

ASSISTANT: Let him die by the sword and spew out his hateful life.
ATREUS: You talk about punishment's conclusion: I want the punishment! Slaying is for a lenient tyrant; in my kingdom death is something people pray for.

SATELLES: Ferro peremptus spiritum inimicum expuat.
ATREVS: De fine poenae loqueris; ego poenam volo.
perimat tyrannus lenis: in regno meo
mors impetratur.

Agamemnon 996:

ELECTRA: Is anything worse than death?
AEGISTHUS: Life, if you wish to die.

ELECTRA: Mortem aliquid ultra est? AEGISTHVS: Vita, si cupias mori.

Mad Hercules 1316-1317:

This labour must be added to the Herculean labours: to live.

Eat ad labores hic quoque Herculeos labor:
vivamus.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Aug. 9, 1858):

You say that you have travelled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique?

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Aug. 9, 1858):

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are nine hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as the first.

Anthony Trollope, The Claverings, chap. 8 (The House in Onslow Crescent):

"You don't believe that he's idle by disposition? Think of all that he has done already."

"That's just what is most against him. He might do very well with us if he had not got that confounded fellowship; but having got that, he thinks the hard work of life is pretty well over with him."

"I don't suppose he can be so foolish as that, Theodore."

"I know well what such men are, and I know the evil that is done to them by the cramming they endure. They learn many names of things — high-sounding names, and they come to understand a great deal about words. It is a knowledge that requires no experience and very little real thought. But it demands much memory; and when they have loaded themselves in this way, they think that they are instructed in all things. After all, what can they do that is of real use to mankind? What can they create?"

"I suppose they are of use."

"I don't know it. A man will tell you, or pretend to tell you — for the chances are ten to one that he is wrong — what sort of lingo was spoken in some particular island or province six hundred years before Christ. What good will that do any one, even if he were right? And then see the effect upon the men themselves! At four-and-twenty a young fellow has achieved some wonderful success, and calls himself by some outlandish and conceited name — a double first, or something of the kind. Then he thinks he has completed everything, and is too vain to learn anything afterward. The truth is, that at twenty-four no man has done more than acquire the rudiments of his education. The system is bad from beginning to end. All that competition makes false and imperfect growth. Come, I'll go to bed."

What would Harry have said if he had heard all this from the man who dusted his boots with his handkerchief?

William Cowper, The Conversation 91-118:

Oh thwart me not, Sir Soph, at every turn,
Nor carp at every flaw you may discern;
Though syllogisms hang not on my tongue,
I am not surely always in the wrong;
'Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
Not that all freedom of dissent I blame;
No, — there I grant the privilege I claim.
A disputable point is no man's ground,
Rove where you please, 'tis common all around.
Discourse may want an animated No,
To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
The mark at which my juster aim I take,
Is contradiction for its own dear sake.
Set your opinion at whatever pitch,
Knots and impediments make something hitch;
Adopt his own, 'tis equally in vain,
Your thread of argument is snapp'd again;
The wrangler, rather than accord with you,
Will judge himself deceived, — and prove it too.
Vociferated logic kills me quite,
A noisy man is always in the right;
I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare,
And when I hope his blunders are all out,
Reply discreetly, "To be sure — no doubt."

A song by John Clare (dated March 3, 1847) contains an example of asyndetic privative adjectives starting at the third word of the third line of the third stanza (italicized below):

I would not be a wither'd leaf
Twirled in an autumn sky
Mine should not be a life so brief
To fade and fall and die

Nor would I be a wither'd flower
Whose stalk was broke before
The bud showed bloom in springs young hour
Heart sicken'd at the core

But I would be a happy thought
With thy sweet sleep to lie
And live unknown, unseen, unsought
And keep my lonely joy

Yes I would be a ray of light
In the apple of thy eye
And watch o'er thee the live long night
In beauty, and in joy

There is no need to posit any literary influences. But we do know that Clare was familiar with Milton's Paradise Lost, which contains several examples of asyndetic privative adjectives (listed here). See Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography (2003), chap. 5:

Clare said that Thomson's The Seasons and Milton's Paradise Lost formed his foundation in poetry. He discovered them early in life and read through them again and again until he was at least thirty.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (April 2, 1852):

It appears to me that, to one standing on the heights of philosophy, mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of sight altogether; that man is altogether too much insisted on. The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe. That is the egotism of the race.

What is this our childish, gossiping, social literature, mainly in the hands of the publishers? When another poet says the world is too much with us, he means, of course, that man is too much with us. In the promulgated views of man, in institutions, in the common sense, there is narrowness and delusion. It is our weakness that so exaggerates the virtues of philanthropy and charity and makes it the highest human attribute. The world will sooner or later tire of philanthropy and all religions based on it mainly. They cannot long sustain my spirit. In order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by and behold a universe in which man is but as a grain of sand.

I am sure that those of my thoughts which consist, or are contemporaneous, with social personal connections, however humane, are not the wisest and widest, most universal. What is the village, city, State, nation, aye the civilized world, that it should concern a man so much? the thought of them affects me in my wisest hours as when I pass a woodchuck's hole. It is a comfortable place to nestle, no doubt, and we have friends, some sympathizing ones, it may be, and a hearth, there; but I have only to get up at midnight, aye to soar or wander a little in my thought by day, to find them all slumbering.

Look at our literature. What a poor, puny, social thing, seeking sympathy! The author troubles himself about his readers, -- would fain have one before he dies. He stands too near his printer; he corrects the proofs. Not satisfied with defiling one another in this world, we would all go to heaven together. To be a good man, that is, a good neighbor in the widest sense, is but little more than to be a good citizen. Mankind is a gigantic institution; it is a community to which most men belong. It is a test I would apply to my companion, -- can he forget man? can he see this world slumbering?

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite. It is not a chamber of mirrors which reflect me. When I reflect, I find that there is other than me. Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy. The universe is larger than enough for man's abode. Some rarely go outdoors, most are always at home at night, very few indeed have stayed out all night once in their lives, fewer still have gone behind the world of humanity, seen its institutions like toadstools by the wayside.

This reminds me of what the poet Robinson Jeffers called Inhumanism:

The first part of The Double Axe was written during the war and finished a year before the war ended, and it bears the scars; but the poem is not primarily concerned with that grim folly. Its burden, as of some previous work of mine, is to present a certain philosophical attitude, which might be called Inhumanism, a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence.

Type Canutist into Google, and you get about 50 hits. None seems to trace its origin. Theodore M. Bernstein, Dos, Don't & Maybes of English Usage (New York: Times Books, 1977), p. 105, claims to have coined Canutist, in his discussion of the word hopefully:

Unfortunately, no parallel word that means "it is to be hoped" exists. And happily, to use hopefully in that manner in no way distorts or corrupts the first meaning of the word. But strangely, the opposition continues to grow. Bruce Bohle, usage editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, tells me that approval of the secondary sense among the dictionary's usage panel was 44 per cent in 1968, 42 per cent in 1970 and 37 per cent in 1975. But he adds this personal opinion about the secondary meaning: "Realistically, I suppose it is here." I think he is right. Those who continue to oppose that meaning are Canutists. That word Canutists was coined here just a moment ago. Can't you hear people saying, "I suppose it's related to King Canute. But what does Canute connote?" And then they will recall that Canute tried in vain to sweep back the waves of the ocean.

The Canutist would be a good name for a reactionary's blog.

This week's theme on A.WordA.Day is eponyms. By coincidence, today's word is Rip Van Winkle, defined as "One who fails to keep up with the times."

At the The 46th History Carnival, I read:

Patriarchy is further undermined by Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti with some observations on the difficulty of proving paternity before DNA testing came along.

"Undermining patriarchy" is a distressing accusation for a Canutist and Rip Van Winkle.

In Milton's scatological views on the 'end times', Dr. Hodges asked for a translation of a Latin passage from one of Milton's academic exercises. Phyllis B. Tillyard, Milton: Private Correspondence and Academic Exercises (Cambridge: University Press, 1932) left the passage in question untranslated (p. 94). For an unexpurgated translation we must turn to the version by Bromley Smith in the Columbia University edition of Milton's works, volume XII (1936). Here is an extended excerpt, first in Smith's translation, then in the original Latin (pp. 226-229), with Dr. Hodges' passage in italics:

And now, my hearers, imagine that, although the first of April is not here, the feast of Hilaria, set apart for the mother of the gods, is at hand; or that a divine ceremony is due the God of laughter. Accordingly, smile and raise loud laughter from your saucy spleen; smooth your brow; yield to wrinkled nostrils, but do not be hanged on your hooked nose; let all places resound with most immoderate laughter; and let a more unfettered cachinnation evoke joyous tears, so that, when these are exhausted by laughter, grief may not have even a little drop to adorn her triumph. I, assuredly, if I shall behold anyone laughing with his jaw stretched too sparingly, will say that he is carefully concealing teeth that are scurfy and rotten and darkened with smut, or jutting out in unsightly ranks; or that in the course of breakfast to-day he so stuffed his paunch that he dare not swell out his belly with laughter, lest not his Sphinx, but his sphincter anus, accompany his mouth in its incantations, and against his will babble some riddles, which I pass over to the doctors, not to Oedipus, for interpretation; for I am unwilling that the groan of a posterior by its cheery voice should make a din in the assembly. Let the doctors who relax the bowels loosen up these questions. If anyone does not utter a loud and distinct roar, I shall assert that he breathes out such deep and deadly exhalations from his jaws that neither Aetna nor Avernus emits anything more noisome; or that he certainly has not long since eaten either garlic or leeks; so that as a result he dare not open his mouth lest he kill some of his neighbors with his stinking breath.

Et jam fingite, Auditores, quamvis non sint Aprilis Calendae, festa adesse Hilaria, matri Deum dicata, vel Deo Risui rem divinam fieri. Ridete itaque & petulanti splene sustollite cachinnum, exporrigite frontem, & uncis indulgete naribus, sed naso adunco ne suspendite; profusissimo risu circumsonent omnia, & solutior cachinnus hilares excutiat lachrymas, ut iis risu exhaustis ne guttulam quidem habeat Dolor qua triumphum exornet suum. Ego profecto si quem nimis parce diducto rictu ridentem conspexero, dicam eum scabros & cariosos dentes rubigine obductos, aut indecoro ordine prominentes abscondere, aut inter prandendum hodie sic opplevisse abdomen, ut non audeat ilia ulterius distendere ad risum, ne praecinenti ori succinat, et aenigmata quaedam nolens affutiat sua non Sphinx sed Sphincter anus, quae medicis interpretanda non Oedipo relinquo; nolim enim hilari vocis sono obstrepat in hoc coetu posticus gemitus: Solvant ista Medici qui alvum solvunt. Si quis strenuum & clarum non ediderit murmur eum ego asseverabo tam gravem & mortiferum faucibus exhalare spiritum, ut vel Aetna, vel Avernus nihil spiret tetrius; aut certe allium aut porrum comedisse dudum, adeo ut non audeat aperire os, ne vicinos quosque foetido halitu enicet.

In short, Milton is saying, "Laugh heartily. If I see someone holding back, I'll assume that (1) he doesn't want to show his rotten teeth; (2) he's afraid laughter will cause him to break wind; or (3) he doesn't want to kill those near him with his bad breath."

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chap. XIV:

'Well; but what's to become of me?' urged the selfish man, who never thought of anybody else. 'It's all your fault. I'll tell you what -- I'll sit by your fire till you come back again.'

Newman cast a despairing glance at his small store of fuel, but, not having the courage to say no -- a word which in all his life he never had said at the right time, either to himself or anyone else -- gave way to the proposed arrangement. Mr Crowl immediately went about making himself as comfortable, with Newman Nogg's means, as circumstances would admit of his being made.

Chamfort:

Almost all men are slaves, for the reason the Spartans gave to explain the servitude of the Persians, the inability to pronounce the syllable "No." Knowing how to pronounce this word and knowing how to live by oneself are the only two ways to preserve one's freedom and individuality.

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chap. XI:

'I think of a great many things. Nobody can prevent that.'

'Oh yes, I understand you, Mr Noggs,' said Mrs Nickleby. 'Our thoughts are free, of course. Everybody's thoughts are their own, clearly.'

'They wouldn't be, if some people had their way,' muttered Newman.

German folk song (tr. Arthur Kevess):

Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts freely flower,
Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them, no hunter can trap them,
No man can deny: Die Gedanken sind frei!

So I think as I please, and this gives me pleasure,
My conscience decrees this right I must treasure;
My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator,
No man can deny: Die Gedanken sind frei!

And if tyrants take me, and throw me in prison,
My thoughts will burst free like blossoms in season.
Foundations will crumble, the structure will tumble,
And free men will cry: Die Gedanken sind frei!

This was a favorite song of Sophie Scholl, executed on February 22, 1943, at the age of 21, for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets.

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chap. LVII:

'Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, agers, and lumbagers,' said Mr Squeers, 'is all philosophy together; that's what it is. The heavenly bodies is philosophy, and the earthly bodies is philosophy. If there's a screw loose in a heavenly body, that's philosophy; and if there's screw loose in a earthly body, that's philosophy too; or it may be that sometimes there's a little metaphysics in it, but that's not often. Philosophy's the chap for me. If a parent asks a question in the classical, commercial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely, "Why, sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher?" -- "No, Mr Squeers," he says, "I an't." "Then, sir," says I, "I am sorry for you, for I shan't be able to explain it." Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I'm one.'