Laudator Temporis Acti

William Blake, Notes on a Public Address:

I am really sorry to see my Countrymen trouble themselves about Politics. If Men were Wise, the Most arbitrary Princes could not hurt them. If they are not Wise, the Freest Government is compell'd to be a Tyranny. Princes appear to me to be Fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human Life.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (April 24, 1852):

Society, man, has no prize to offer me that can tempt me; not one. That which interests a town or city or any large number of men is always something trivial, as politics.

Henry David Thoreau, Natural History of Massachusetts:

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

Henry David Thoreau, Walking:

In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.

Ambrose Bierce:

Do you know, Johnny Voter, that you are a dupe? Does it penetrate your poor understanding that every time you throw off the top of your head to give tongue for the man of another man's choice the worthy persons who keep the table in the little game of politics are affected with merriment? Have you ever a dawnlight of suspicion that in the service of their purpose your wage is their derision, your pension their silent contempt? O, you will uphold principle. You will stand in to avert the quadrennial peril to the country. You will assist in repelling the treasonable attempt of one half its inhabitants whose interest (obviously) lies in its destruction. You will be a 'Republican' — or a 'Democrat'; you will be it diligently, loudly and like the devil. Pray do; and when you have processioned your feet sore and your teeth loose, and been a spectacular extravaganza to the filling of your ambition's belly, may it comfort you to know that you have been a Tool.

John Burroughs, The Still Small Voice:

The unknown, the inaudible forces that make for good in every state and community — the gentle word, the kind act, the forgiving look, the quiet demeanor, the silent thinkers and workers, the cheerful and unwearied toilers, the scholar in his study, the scientist in his laboratory — how much more we owe to these things than to the clamorous and discordant voices of the world of politics and the newspaper!

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), p. 32:

The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and . . . all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing of the sand and sowing of the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit.

Erasmus, Adagia II viii 67, in Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 34: Adages II vii 1 to III iii 100, translated and annotated by R.A.B. Mynors (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 77, with notes on p. 342:

Viri senis astaphis calvaria
An old man's skull is as dry as raisins

Ἀνδρὸς γέροντος ἀσταφὶς τὸ κρανίον , An old man's skull is like raisins. The lesson of this adage is that an old man physically is weak and flabby; the juice is drained out of him and his flesh is gone to nothing. Lucian¹ in his Tyrant about old men: 'For they're all just a bunch of raisins.' Grapes when dried are wrinkled and flabby, because the juice has been drained out of them by the sun. Hence the Ancients took also to calling dried-up old men 'raisins' because of their many wrinkles; Lucilius,² cited by Nonius: 'Wrinkled and dry, the old want everything the same.'

67 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.96, Diogenianus 1.85, Suidas A 2190)
1 Lucian] Cataplus 6
2 Lucilius] This line from the early Roman satirical poet Lucilius (557 in Marx's edition, cited by Nonius p 12 Mercier) was added in 1515.

Viri senis astaphis calvaria
Ἀνδρὸς γέροντος ἀσταφὶς τὸ κρανίον, id est
Viri senis velut vua passa cranium.

Admonet adagium invalidum et flaccidum esse senile corpus exhausto succo carnibusque adesis. Lucianus in Tyranno de senibus: Ἐπεὶ ἀσταφίδες γε πάντες ἤδη εἰσί, id est Quandoquidem jam omnes vuae passae sunt. Rugosae enim et flaccidae sunt vuae passae propter succum sole decoctum. Unde veteres et vuas passas vocabant senes passos ob rugositatem. Lucilius citante Nonio:

Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.

Ibn al-Faqīh, Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1885), p. 1, tr. in Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Edited and Translated by Bernard Lewis, Vol. II: Religion and Society (1974; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 198:

Men are divided into four classes: kings, raised up by their right to rule; viziers, distinguished by understanding and judgment; upper classes, raised up by affluence; and middle classes, linked with them by education. The rest of mankind are vanishing scum,¹ floating refuse, vile men and women bound to meanness, whose only concern is to eat and to sleep.

¹ Cf. Qur'an, xiii, 18.

Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 2.18.1-4 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to be a good reader, read; if you wish to be a good writer, write. If you should give up reading for thirty days one after the other, and be engaged in something else, you will know what happens. So also if you lie in bed for ten days, get up and try to take a rather long walk, and you will see how wobbly your legs are. In general, therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it; if you want not to do something, refrain from doing it, and accustom yourself to something else instead.

πᾶσα ἕξις καὶ δύναμις ὑπὸ τῶν καταλλήλων ἔργων συνέχεται καὶ αὔξεται, ἡ περιπατητικὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ περιπατεῖν, ἡ τροχαστικὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ τρέχειν. ἂν θέλῃς ἀναγνωστικὸς εἶναι, ἀναγίγνωσκε· ἂν γραφικός, γράφε. ὅταν δὲ τριάκοντα ἐφεξῆς ἡμέρας μὴ ἀναγνῷς, ἀλλ' ἄλλο τι πράξῃς, γνώσῃ τὸ γινόμενον. οὕτως κἂν ἀναπέσῃς δέκα ἡμέρας, ἀναστὰς ἐπιχείρησον μακροτέραν ὁδὸν περιπατῆσαι καὶ ὄψει, πῶς σου τὰ σκέλη παρα λύεται. καθόλου οὖν εἴ τι ποιεῖν ἐθέλῃς, ἑκτικὸν ποίει αὐτό· εἴ τι μὴ ποιεῖν ἐθέλῃς, μὴ ποίει αὐτό, ἀλλ' ἔθισον ἄλλο τι πράττειν μᾶλλον ἀντ' αὐτοῦ.

Corpus Parisinum 506 (tr. Denis Searby):

A plant being continuously transplanted bears no fruit.

Φυτὸν µεταφερόµενον συνεχῶς καρπόν οὐ ποιεῖ.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Waste Books B.78 (tr. R.J. Hollingale):

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Jeder Mensch hat auch seine moralische backside, die er nicht ohne Not zeigt, und die er so lange als möglich mit den Hosen des guten Anstandes zudeckt.

Petronius, Satyricon 57.3 (tr. J.P. Sullivan):

Some fly-by-night from god knows where — not worth his own piss.

larifuga nescio quis, nocturnus, qui non valet lotium suum.

On lotium and similar words see J.N. Adams (1943-2021), The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 245-249. What was urine good for? For whitening, of clothes and teeth.

Corpus Parisinum 479 = Philo fragment 11.4 Harris (tr. Denis Searby):

To distribute equal shares to unequal sharers belongs to the greatest of injustices.

Τὸ νέµειν ἴσα τοῖς ἀνίσοις τῆς µεγίστης ἐστὶν ἀδικίας.