Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 12.2

. . . Now the allusion he has made use of for this purpose seems to be exceeding proper and pertinent; for the old moralists in their fables have commonly chosen the sea to represent the mortal state. The roughness of its waves, its frequent ebbs and floods, the tempestuous weather to which it lies exposed, and the suffocating all that sink into it, do abundantly justify the metaphor. 

By the ship may be meant, that which unites the soul to the body, and brings her into this mortal state, whether it be fate, or fortune, or whatever else you will please to call it. 

The master of this ship is God, who governs and disposes all things, and commands the souls into their respective bodies, according as His own Infinite Wisdom and tender care sees fit, and in proportion to their own deserts. 

The bringing this ship into port is the assigning to these souls their proper station, and country, and family; by virtue whereof, some are born in one climate and nation, and some in another: some are descended from great and noble families, and others meanly born; some of virtuous or healthful parents, and others of vicious and diseased ones. 

The going out for fresh water, is the care we take for supplying the necessities of nature, without which it is impossible that life should be supported: and indeed, what is there in this state of mortality of such general use? What that we can so little want, both for the making of our meat and drink, as water? 

What is intended by gathering salads, or shellfish by the by, himself has very elegantly informed us, by instancing in a wife, and an estate; and acquainting us withal, that when Providence is pleased to bestow them upon us, we are not to refuse them, but so neither are we to receive or value them, as either the principal and most desirable goods, or indeed such as are properly ours. 

For the first and chief good is that disposition of mind, which is ever obedient to the master of the ship, ever attentive to his call. Nor must we lay ourselves out upon these matters, as we were allowed to do upon water, or necessary things, but look upon them as additional comforts only, and such as help to make life easy and convenient. 

Now if this master calls us to the ship, and gives order for our returning back to himself, and to that which is our true, our native country: make the best of your way, says he, to the ship; leave everything that relates to this mortal life, be ready to obey his first orders, and do not loiter, or hanker upon anything behind, for fear, when nature cuts the cable, your inclinations still be left on shore. 

Go you must, that’s most certain, and therefore it is that he tells you, if you do not follow readily and cheerfully, and quit all of your own accord, you shall be tied neck and heels, like sheep, and thrown under the hatches. That is, you shall be forced, and torn away, and thrust out of the world, like those foolish and sheepish wretches, who die with cowardice, and reluctancy, and unmanly lamentations of themselves and their friends. 

But there is yet another caution observable here, which is that the person to whom the enjoyment of marriage, and such others as are the additional advantages of life, are allowed, must be sure to indulge himself in such enjoyment of them only, as is seasonable; that so, when he has taken as much of these as is fit for him, he may remove without any delay, and readily comply with the master’s first call. 

But if a man be old, and draws near his end, he will do best to keep himself wholly disengaged, and entertain himself with nothing so much, as the constant thought and expectation of the ship’s sailing, and his quitting the shore; for fear, when the time of his return comes, and the master calls, he be retarded by his burden, and fastened down to land, and be forced, with a great deal of unbecoming concern, to leave a young wife, and pretty children behind. 

And surely an old man, upon all accounts, has much greater reason to prepare for leaving the world, than to entertain himself with vain projects of settling in it. 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 3

When it comes to the orators, however, who does not know which are the best—Demosthenes for the vigor of his style, the impressiveness of his thought, and the copiousness of his vocabulary, qualities in which he surpasses all other orators; and Lysias for his brevity, the simplicity and coherence of his thought, and for his well concealed cleverness. 

However, I should not advise you to read these two chiefly, but Hypereides rather and Aeschines; for the faculties in which they excel are simpler, their rhetorical embellishments are easier to grasp, and the beauty of their diction is not one whit inferior to that of the two who are ranked first. But I should advise you to read Lycurgus⁠ as well, since he has a lighter touch than those others and reveals a certain simplicity and nobility of character in his speeches. 

At this point I say it is advisable—even if some one, after reading my recommendation of the consummate masters of oratory, is going to find fault—also not to remain unacquainted with the more recent orators, those who lived a little before our time;⁠ I refer to the works of such men as Antipater,⁠ Theodorus,⁠ Plution,⁠ and Conon,⁠ and to similar material. 

For the powers they display can be more useful to us because, when we read them, our judgment is not fettered and enslaved, as it is when we approach the ancients. For when we find that we are able to criticize what has been said, we are most encouraged to attempt the same things ourselves, and we find more pleasure in comparing ourselves with others when we are convinced that in the comparison we should be found to be not inferior to them, with the chance, occasionally, of being even superior. 

I shall now turn to the Socratics,⁠ writers who, I affirm, are quite indispensable to every man who aspires to become an orator. For just as no meat without salt will be gratifying to the taste, so no branch of literature, as it seems to me, could possibly be pleasing to the ear if it lacked the Socratic grace. 

It would be a long task to eulogize the others; even to read them is no light thing. But it is my own opinion that Xenophon, and he alone of the ancients, can satisfy all the requirements of a man in public life. 

Whether one is commanding an army in time of war, or is guiding the affairs of a state, or is addressing a popular assembly or a senate, or even if he were addressing a court of law and desired, not as a professional master of eloquence merely, but as a statesman or a royal prince, to utter sentiments appropriate to such a character at the bar of justice, the best exemplar of all, it seems to me, and the most profitable for all these purposes is Xenophon. 

For not only are his ideas clear and simple and easy for everyone to grasp, but the character of his narrative style is attractive, pleasing, and convincing, being in a high degree true to life in the representation of character, with much charm also and effectiveness, so that his power suggests not cleverness but actual wizardry. 

If, for instance, you should be willing to read his work on the March Inland very carefully, you will find no speech, such as you will one day possess the ability to make, whose subject matter he has not dealt with and can offer as a kind of norm to any man who wishes to steer his course by him or imitate him. 

If it is needful for the statesman to encourage those who are in the depths of despondency, time and again our writer shows how to do this; or if the need is to incite and exhort, no one who understands the Greek language could fail to be aroused by Xenophon's hortatory speeches. My own heart, at any rate, is deeply moved and at times I weep even as I read his account of all those deeds of valor. 

Or, if it is necessary to deal prudently with those who are proud and conceited and to avoid, on the one hand, being affected in any way by their displeasure, or, on the other, enslaving one's own spirit to them in unseemly fashion and doing their will in everything, guidance in this also is to be found in him. 

And also how to hold secret conferences both with generals apart from the common soldiers and with the soldiers in the same way;⁠ the proper manner of conversing with kings and princes; how to deceive enemies to their hurt and friends for their own benefit; how to tell the plain truth to those who are needlessly disturbed without giving offense, and to make them believe it; how not to trust too readily those in authority over you, and the means by which such persons deceive their inferiors, and the way in which men outwit and are outwitted—on all these points Xenophon's treatise⁠ gives adequate information. 

For I imagine that it is because he combines deeds with words, because he did not learn by hearsay nor by copying, but by doing deeds himself as well as telling of them, that he made his speeches most convincingly true to life in all his works and especially in this one which I chanced to mention. 

And be well assured that you will have no occasion to repent, but that both in the senate and before the people you will find this great man reaching out a hand to you if you earnestly and diligently read him. 

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 12.1

As when a ship lies in port, and you go out for fresh water, you happen to meet with shellfish, or salads upon the coast; this is an accidental advantage, and beside your main purpose, but still you thoughts must be fixed upon the ship, and it should be your great care to attend the master’s call: that so, when he gives you the signal, you may quit all readily, and not be bound, and carried away by violence, as sheep must be served. 

So here in the affairs of the world, if it be your fortune, instead of fish or salad, to light upon a beloved wife or child, which give an agreeable relish to life, none of these matters must be suffered to detain you. 

But when the master gives you the signal, all must be left, and the best of your way made to the ship. But if you are in years, be sure you never stir far from the ship, for fear you be out of the way, when the master calls. 

Comment: 

He has by a short but ingenious discourse, endeavored to draw us off from the pursuit of those external advantages, upon which we are used to set so great a value, by showing us, that all these things are neither in our disposal, nor any such happiness as can be properly called ours. 

But now, lest this argument of his should be so far mistaken, or wrested beyond its true purpose, as to be thought to debar us of marriage, and other innocent enjoyments and satisfactions, and absolutely to forbid us the having any thing at all to do with the world and its advantages, he acquaints us in the next place, what things those are, which he allows the enjoyment of, and with what limitations we ought to enjoy them: 

That we should leave ourselves and them at the disposal of God, and resign all this to His Providence, without reserve; and then, in such an humble dependence as this is, to use them moderately, and to value them as they deserve: that our concern is due in the greatest measure, to the necessities of life, and such as human nature cannot subsist without. 

Which Epictetus here has expressed, by a ship’s watering: meaning by this, food, and raiment, and dwelling, and such other things, as they, who look no farther than just needful supplies, satisfy themselves withal. These things, therefore, are allowed to be a part of our care, provided it be but in the second place, and with subordination to a higher good. 

As for such things, as are not absolutely necessary, but only the conveniences of life, as a wife, children, estate, and the like, these he calls accidental advantages, and beside our main purpose; and therefore they are allowed the third place in our esteem. 

When a bountiful Providence bestows these upon us, we are to receive and use them seasonably; but be sure to keep our mind ever fixed upon our chief and most desirable good. 

But as for pleasures, and riches, and honors, and preferments, and such other impertinencies, he will not so much as admit these into the number of his accidental advantages, but supposes them inconsistent with a strictly rational and virtuous conversation. 

For these are what, he told us before, must be wholly laid aside: but the enjoyments of marriage, and such other conveniences of human nature, he advised to have suspended for a time only, while men were young and inexperienced in the study of virtue, that so their first beginnings might meet with no interruption, but take good root, and fasten upon the mind. 

And for this reason, when men have made some progress, and are arrived to such a degree of perfection, as may qualify them to use these with safety, then he allows them to enjoy them, provided still it be in the quality of an additional advantage, and not a principal design. . . . 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 2

So let us consider the poets: I would counsel you to read Menander of the writers of Comedy quite carefully, and Euripides of the writers of Tragedy, and to do so, not casually by reading them to yourself, but by having them read to you by others, preferably by men who know how to render the lines pleasurably, but at any rate so as not to offend. For the effect is enhanced when one is relieved of the preoccupation of reading. 

And let no one of the more "advanced" critics chide me for selecting Menander's plays in preference to the Old Comedy, or Euripides in preference to the earlier writers of Tragedy. For physicians do not prescribe the most costly diet for their patients, but that which is salutary. 

Now it would be a long task to enumerate all the advantages to be derived from these writers; indeed, not only has Menander's portrayal of every character and every charming trait surpassed all the skill of the early writers of Comedy, but the suavity and plausibility of Euripides, while perhaps not completely attaining to the grandeur of the tragic poet's⁠ way of deifying his characters, or to his high dignity, are very useful for the man in public life; and furthermore, he cleverly fills his plays with an abundance of characters and moving incidents, and strews them with maxims useful on all occasions, since he was not without acquaintance with philosophy. 

But Homer comes first and in the middle and last, in that he gives of himself to every boy and adult and old man just as much as each of them can take. 

Lyric and elegiac poetry too, and iambics and dithyrambs are very valuable for the man of leisure, but the man who intends to have a public career and at the same time to increase the scope of his activities and the effectiveness of his oratory, will have no time for them. 

But the historians for many reasons the statesman must read attentively, because, even apart from the speeches they contain, it is most essential that the statesman, the man who chooses to conduct public affairs, should be acquainted with measures and successes and failures, which happen not only in accordance with reasonable expectation, but also at times contrary thereto, to both men and states. 

And the reason for this statement is that it is the man with the widest knowledge of what had happened to others who will best carry out his own undertakings, and, so far as it is possible, safely, while every reverse he will bear nobly because of the fact that even in his successes he was never unaware of the possibility of a change to the opposite fortune. 

As for Herodotus, if you ever want real enjoyment, you will read him when quite at your ease, for the easy-going manner and charm of his narrative will give the impression that his work deals with stories rather than with actual history. 

But among the foremost historians I place Thucydides, and among those of second rank Theopompus;⁠ for not only is there a rhetorical quality in the narrative portion of his speeches, but he is not without eloquence nor negligent in expression, and the slovenliness of his diction is not so bad as to offend you. 

As for Ephorus,⁠ while he hands down to us a great deal of information about events, yet the tediousness and carelessness of his narrative style would not suit your purpose. 

Maxims of Goethe 95

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with goodwill; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master. 

IMAGE: Joshua Reynolds, A Meeting of the Society of Dilettanti (1777) 

Dio Chrysostom, On Training for Public Speaking 1

Although I had often praised your character as that of a good man who is worthy to be first among the best, yet I never admired it before as I do now. 

For that a man in the very prime of life and second to no one in influence, who possesses great wealth and has every opportunity to live in luxury by day and night, should in spite of all this reach out for education also and be eager to acquire training in eloquent speaking, and should display no hesitation even if it should cost toil, seems to me to give proof of an extraordinarily noble soul and one not only ambitious, but in very truth devoted to wisdom. 

And for that matter the best of the ancients said that they went on learning not only in the prime of life but also as they grew old.⁠ And you, as it seems to me, are altogether wise in believing that a statesman needs experience and training in public speaking and in eloquence. For it is true that this will prove of very great help toward making him beloved and influential and esteemed instead of being looked down upon. 

For when men are afraid, what does more to inspire them than the spoken word? And when they wax insolent and uplifted in spirit, what more effectively brings them down and chastens them? What has greater influence in keeping them from indulging their desires? Whose admonitions do they endure more meekly than the man's whose speech delights them? 

Time and again, at any rate, there may be seen in our cities one group of men spending, handing out largess, adorning their city with dedications, but the orators who support these measures getting the applause, as though they and not the others had brought these things about. 

For this same reason the poets of the earliest times, who received their gift of poetry from the gods, never spoke of either the strong or the beautiful as being "looked upon as gods," but reserved this praise for the orators. So it is because you not only have observed all this, but are also endeavoring to put it into practice that I commend and admire you.

And I acknowledge on my own behalf a gratitude beyond the ordinary because you have believed that I could be useful to you in carrying out this purpose and this endeavor. For up to the present, as one of the writers of old said that he was "a good enough prophet for his own self," so I too considered that I should do well enough for myself in oratory, though barely even that. 

But you elate me and persuade me to take courage, in the hope that I can be of use to one who not only has attained so high a degree of culture, but is also as gifted as yourself. And perhaps I could, just as a boy or some aged herdsman might, be useful to a strong and vigorous wayfarer in pointing out a shorter road or a beaten track of which he did not happen to know. 

But to cut my preface short,⁠ I must at once endeavour to carry out your instructions.

For a mere lad, now, or a young man who wishes to withdraw from political life and devote himself to training and to the acquisition of forensic ability, there is need of a different regimen in both tasks and activities. 

But you are not unacquainted with the task, nor are you able to forsake the political career, nor is it the eloquence and effectiveness of a pleader in the courts of law of which you stand in need, but rather that which is alike fitting and sufficient for a statesman. 

So first of all, you should know that you have no need of toil or exacting labor; for although, when a man has already undergone a great deal of training, these contribute very greatly to his progress, yet if he has had only a little, they will lessen his confidence and make him diffident about getting into action; just as with athletes who are unaccustomed to the training of the body, such training weakens them if they become fatigued by exercises which are too severe. 

But just as bodies unaccustomed to toil need anointing and moderate exercise rather than the training of the gymnasium, so you in preparing yourself for public speaking have need of diligence which has a tempering of pleasure rather than laborious training. 

Jacob's Ladder 14

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Jacob's Dream (c. 1729) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 25

Salvator Rosa, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (c. 1660) 

Frippisms 10

Gradually extend the parameters of your competence. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.13

Be of good cheer; there is only one knot left for you to untangle, though it is a knot for a Hercules: “Good does not result from evil. But riches result from numerous cases of poverty; therefore, riches are not a good.” 
 
This syllogism is not recognized by our school, but the Peripatetics both concoct it and give its solution. Posidonius, however, remarks that this fallacy, which has been bandied about among all the schools of dialectic, is refuted by Antipater as follows:
 
“The word ‘poverty’ is used to denote, not the possession of something, but the non-possession or, as the ancients have put it, deprivation, (for the Greeks use the phrase ‘by deprivation,’ meaning ‘negatively’). ‘Poverty’ states, not what a man has, but what he has not. 
 
“Consequently, there can be no fulness resulting from a multitude of voids; many positive things, and not many deficiencies, make up riches.
 
“You have,” says he, “a wrong notion of the meaning of what poverty is. For poverty does not mean the possession of little, but the non-possession of much; it is used, therefore, not of what a man has, but of what he lacks.”
 
I could express my meaning more easily if there were a Latin word which could translate the Greek word which means “not-possessing.” Antipater assigns this quality to poverty, but for my part I cannot see what else poverty is than the possession of little. 
 
If ever we have plenty of leisure, we shall investigate the question: what is the essence of riches, and what the essence of poverty; but when the time comes, we shall also consider whether it is not better to try to mitigate poverty, and to relieve wealth of its arrogance, than to quibble about the words as if the question of the things were already decided. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Honestly, this section of the letter makes my head hurt. I’m afraid I’m not terribly clever when it comes to logical trickery, but I am relieved to see that Seneca also wants no part in such distractions. The fancy words become meaningless when they are separated from the actual things. 
 
The syllogism doesn’t sound terribly Stoic to me, so it comes as little surprise that it is a creation of the Peripatetics. Were the critics perhaps trying to attack a straw man? 
 
Whatever the original context, the problem is that poverty and wealth are still being presented as if they were in themselves good or evil, when the whole Stoic argument depends upon shifting our values to the content of character. The debate grows tiresome when this basic distinction is avoided, as the two sides merely talk past one another. 
 
If I only wanted to arrive at a preferred conclusion that riches are not goods, this might be a valid approach, though it would most certainly not be a sound one. First, we are still working from the false premise that poverty is an evil. Second, as Antipater explained, poverty is, strictly speaking, an absence, and it would be contradictory to suggest that something can arise out of nothing. 
 
To resolve the ambiguity about this demonstration, it would be necessary to define exactly what we mean by poverty and wealth, particularly with regard to the question of whether being poor means having very little or having nothing at all. With Seneca, I am inclined to doubt that we can ever speak of anything as a total privation, since an absence is always relative to some other presence, but are we running the risk of missing the forest for the trees? 
 
Make no mistake, while I am deeply interested in the metaphysical aspects of deprivation, is it not for our purposes sufficient to consider how poverty and wealth, as immediate experiences, influence our judgments about benefit and harm? If we are hampered by need, should we not strive to overcome it? If we are spoiled by affluence, should we not choose to reject it? 
 
Just as people disagree on a glass being half full or half empty, even as it remains entirely the same glass of water, I wonder if an ontology of negation can wait for the moment, until we first have established how to cope with a concrete hardship in our daily living. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Bartoleme Esteban Murillo, The Young Beggar (c. 1650) 

Epictetus, Fragments 4

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind. 

IMAGE: Caspar David Friedrich, The Tree of Crows (c. 1822) 

Netherlandish Proverbs 18

"To find the dog in the pot." 

Arriving too late for dinner, to find all the food has been eaten. 

Delphic Maxims 104

Πρᾶττε συντόμως 

Act swiftly 

IMAGE: John Trumbull, The Death of Paulus Aemilius at the Battle of Cannae (1773) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 87.12

Posidonius thinks that the syllogism should be framed as follows: “Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care are not goods. But riches and health and similar conditions do none of these things; therefore, riches and health are not goods.” 
 
This syllogism he then goes on to extend still further in the following way: “Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care, but on the other hand create in it arrogance, vanity, and insolence, are evils. But things which are the gift of Fortune drive us into these evil ways. Therefore, these things are not goods.”
 
“But,” says the objector, “by such reasoning, things which are the gift of Fortune will not even be advantages.” 
 
No, advantages and goods stand each in a different situation. An advantage is that which contains more of usefulness than of annoyance. But a good ought to be unmixed and with no element in it of harmfulness. 
 
A thing is not good if it contains more benefit than injury, but only if it contains nothing but benefit. Besides, advantages may be predicated of animals, of men who are less than perfect, and of fools. 
 
Hence the advantageous may have an element of disadvantage mingled with it, but the word “advantageous” is used of the compound because it is judged by its predominant element. The good, however, can be predicated of the wise man alone; it is bound to be without alloy. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87 
 
Nevertheless, however accommodating we wish to be, it is never wise to use our words carelessly. As much as it may offend the Peripatetics, Posidonius offers us a more precise set of distinctions: 
 
For something to be a good, it must be of benefit in itself, without any qualifications. 
 
For something to be an evil, it must be of harm in itself, without any qualifications. 
 
For something to be an advantage, it must offer a greater opportunity for benefit than for harm. 
 
For something to be a disadvantage, it must offer a greater opportunity for harm than for benefit. 
 
By such standards, which avoid any uncertainty or ambiguity, virtue is our sole human good, vice is our sole human evil, and all other circumstances will become either advantages or disadvantages to us, depending on whether they are employed in the service of virtue or of vice. 
 
Sometimes the semantics isn’t “just” semantics. We run the grave risk of a creeping definition, where a relative advantage is easily confused with an absolute good, and so we slowly begin to view conditional qualities as if they possessed an unconditional worth. Before too long, things like money or health are treated with a total reverence they hardly deserve. 
 
The first syllogism explains this clearly enough. Money and health do not, of their own accord, make us better, which is why we should not rightly refer to them as goods. 
 
The second syllogism may appear to be pushing the envelope, even for a Stoic, but if examined closely, it simply draws some further conclusions from the previous claim. While money and health do not, of their own accord, make us worse, they still have an uncanny way of encouraging us to make poor choices for ourselves. 
 
I suppose it only remains to be seen if these circumstances ought to be treated as advantages or as disadvantages, yet because their utility is entirely contingent, I will once again have to say, “It depends.” How are they influencing my judgments? 
 
Is Posidonius being a bit too pessimistic here? Do wealth and comfort usually turn out to be disadvantages, where the potential harm outweighs the potential benefits? This is a particular, and not a universal question, but in speaking from my own experience, that sounds about right. Though a man of far greater character may find it to be otherwise, such men are rather hard to come by. Posidonius is calling the odds as he sees them.
 
The critic is placing far too much value in the “gifts” of Fortune, to the point where he conflates the perfect with the imperfect. The good life will be pure and simple, regardless of the trimmings. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014 

IMAGE: Pieter de Hooch, A Woman with a Pair of Scales (c. 1664) 

Abandoned Places 72

Nature 74

Stockdale on Stoicism 60

No men avoid this initial terrible fear that only their imaginations can generate and few, if any, avoid the initial hesitant step of grudgingly giving ground while taking measure of their predicament. 

Finding himself sinking into the quagmire of complicity, hardly a man exists who does not wish he had stood up and blown the "enough’s enough" whistle sooner than he did. For self-respect—and in the long term sense, for mental health—the sooner he blows the whistle, the better.

If a person had delivered up your body to some passer by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivery up your mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?

It is better to die of hunger, exempt from guilt and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.

If a man’s sense of honor, his good faith, and his prudence are not destroyed, then he too is preserved; but if any of these perish or be taken by storm, then he too perishes with them.

Once the neophyte political prisoner realizes that experiencing pain is not as bad as its anticipation, a kind of equanimity and pride comes over him. He knows that it is the unpunished complicity, not the tortured compliance, that tears a man apart. 

He casts aside the error of involving himself with externals, of depending on "what is not up to him," on another’s sympathy, gullibility, or the price for making a "deal." 

He uses both the rational and irrational elements of his soul—both part of the same to the Stoic—to see his proper role in the unfolding drama. 

He accommodates himself to fate. He makes a declaration to himself and to the prison regime that, regarding his choices, he is "free." 

He has arrived at the point where the "strategic" side of Stoicism, the accommodation to fate and mind over matter, can bring him peace.

—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character 

IMAGE: Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in a Prison of Despair (1887) 

Owls 23

 

Henry David Thoreau 19

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (14 July, 1852) 

IMAGE: James Goodwyn Clonney, In the Woodshed (1838) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 24

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (27 June, 1839) 

IMAGE: Paul Emile Chabas, Dancing Nymphs (1899)