Author: Fran^cois de La Rochefoucauld Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199540004 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 399
Book Description
This is the fullest collection of La Rochefoucauld's writings ever published in English, and includes the first complete translation of the Miscellaneous Reflections. A table of alternative maxim numbers and an index of topics help the reader to locate any maxim quickly.
Author: William Ferraiolo Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 059545092X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
Cynical Maxims and Marginalia is a collection of cognitive projectiles. They pierce the reader's pretensions, illusions, and unexamined assumptions. They provide flashes of insight along with an occasional good laugh at mankind's expense. There is little effort here to prove any point, demonstrate any claim, or justify any supposition. Persuasion is of secondary interest. The primary intention is to incite, to puncture, and to awaken the reader from slumber. The maxim is the author's weapon of choice-a scattershot delivery system. The book lets fly in all directions, but takes particular aim at no one- or at everyone (which amounts to much the same thing). Careful argumentation has its place and value, but so does firing off a quiver full of flaming rhetorical arrows. These are haphazard shots loosed into the darkness. Take cover.
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141939184 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.
Author: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Publisher: New York Review of Books ISBN: 9780940322509 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
German scientist and man of letters Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was an 18th-century polymath: an experimental physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, a practicing critic both of art and literature. He is most celebrated, however, for the casual notes and aphorisms that he collected in what he called his Waste Books. With unflagging intelligence and encyclopedic curiosity, Lichtenberg wittily deflates the pretensions of learning and society, examines a range of philosophical questions, and tracks his own thoughts down hidden pathways to disconcerting and sometimes hilarious conclusions. Lichtenberg's Waste Books have been greatly admired by writers as very different as Tolstoy, Einstein, and Andre Breton, while Nietzsche and Wittgenstein acknowledged them as a significant inspiration for their own radical work in philosophy. The record of a brilliant and subtle mind in action, The Waste Books are above all a powerful testament to the necessity, and pleasure, of unfettered thought.
Author: Willis Goth Regier Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803239696 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
Where would we be without flattery? Hobbes deemed it an honorable duty and Meredith called it the ?finest of the arts.? Alexander the Great applied it as imperial policy; Caesar and Cleopatra were masters of it; and Napoleon devoured it like candy. But flattery also has influential enemies. Cicero called flattery ?the handmaid of vice? and Tacitus compared it to poison.ø ø In a work as erudite as it is entertaining, Willis Goth Regier looks into flattery as an element as flammable (and as taken for granted) as oxygen. Giving flattery light, attention, and care, Regier treats readers to hundreds of historical examples drawn from the highest social circles in politics, romance, and religion, from the courts of Byzantium and China to Paris, Rome, and Washington, DC. ø Because flattery must please, it is playful and creative, and Regier?s book makes the most of it, moving with light steps, now and then pausing to take in the view. Ambitious flatterers even seek to flatter God, a practice Regier treats with trepidation. This is a book for those who would understand the history, tactics, and pleasures of flattery, not least the thrill of danger. ø ?O, flatter me, for love delights in praises.??Shakespeare ø ?The whole World and the Bus?ness of it, is Manag?d by Flattery and Paradox; the one sets up False Gods, and the other maintains them.??Sir Roger L?Estrange ø ?Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.??Samuel Johnson ø ?In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands how to flatter.??Hippolyte Taine
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Author: Fran^cois de La Rochefoucauld
Author: François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Author: François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Author: François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Author: William Ferraiolo
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Author: Odette de Mourgues
Author: François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Author: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Author: Willis Goth Regier