210225 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.

Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;

It has no equal.

The weak can overcome the strong;

The supple can overcome the stiff.

Under heaven everyone knows this,

Yet no one puts it into practice.

Therefore the sage says:

     He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people

          is fit to rule them.

     He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves

          to be king of the universe.

The truth often seems paradoxical.

From The Daily Stoic: 

 

“Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend . . .”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.27

The prince and the pauper share the same earth in death.  

"Simple myth trying to be legend" is as effective an insult as I've ever seen.

Cf. Ozymandias

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

From Eric Hoffer, PART 4 Beginning and End:  

The Fanatics 

The creative Man of Words can find an outlet for his passions. The noncreative Man of Words finds no release in the present and, in his frustration, moves to change it. 

If the creative Man of Words keeps the reins of the Movement, it softens and becomes mild. If he does not, the noncreative Men of Words will force radical change, relegating the creative to the role of heretic, cast out from the Movement because he has not the will to continue what he started. 

(The True Believer, XVI-111)

From Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Rhetoric, pp. 26-41, Chapter 1. Repetition of Words and Phrases:

Technical terms: 

Anaphora – repetition of the same words at the start of successive sentences or clauses.

He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always will; they always do; they always have. James, The Ambassadors (1903)

"They always do, by itself, captures about the same literal meaning as the longer enumeration of past, present, and future; but the anaphora gives the result an exhaustive feel to go with the exhaustive substance." (Farnsworth) 

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)

Fuller quote and context from Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson: 

Next day I dined with Johnson at Mr. Thrale's. He attacked Gray, calling him 'a dull fellow.' 

BOSWELL. 'I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry.' 

JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull every where. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet.' 

He then repeated some ludicrous lines, which have escaped my memory....

Asyndeton – the omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence